For Connie, Whom I Love, And My Other Cranky Conservative Friends
by Dean
In this thread, the amazing Mrs. Connie du Toit observed the following about Dean Esmay:
Without coming off as too personal, your last paragraph really helped me to understand how you view these things and why you sort of like these [national political] conventions. As opposed to someone like me who hates them.
Unless the race has been close and the convention determines who the candidate will actually be for that party, I see these conventions as little more than an annoyance and a circus side show. It's all fluff and no substance. (And I hate fluff and no substance.)
Well my dear, they have become exactly what you say they have, and yet they still serve the same national purpose that they have always served. Which is why I still watch them, and still view them as matters of grave national import. Even if they have become pale shadows of what they once were.
They work, and they matter. And here is my explanation to Mrs. du Toit as to why that is so. This is also a response to my conservative friends, which in part explains that while I often find myself allied with some of your causes, I am not always one of you.
I post the following realizing that most of my readers will not understand much of what I say. I'm sure most people will find it high-falutin' and hopelessly complex. Yet this may be as close as I ever come to explaining my view of American governance.
Connie: It has been a long and difficult journey, my view of politics. Without getting too silly, I often astonish myself with the positions I wind up taking. Not because I'm so fucking brilliant, but because I find myself saying things that at other points in my life I could never have imagined myself saying.
At one point I was a hard-core, Reagan hating, Bush hating Democrat. Then I became a Libertarian Party member who thought fondly of Ross Perot. For a brief while, I considered myself a Conservative Republican (my flirtation with the clown Limbaugh helped, although I always disagreed with some of his stances). I signed on as a Republican for a brief while because the Contract With America struck me as a mostly-healthy agenda (a mostly-healthy agenda which mostly passed into law, by the way, despite what some would like to tell you).
When I was a businessman, I became very against the Federal government, very against the Clinton administration. My tax burden, especially as a low-income business owner, was genuinely oppressive--my monthly tax bill exceeded what I spent on food, gasoline, and rent combined (which is easy if you are self-employed and making less than $40,000 a year or so). I got in trouble with the IRS at one point and during that time I truly hated the Federal government. I was by any Democrat's definition a "little guy" (God I hate that term) and the IRS was pressing down on me and my new, pregnant wife while she sat in a hospital bed nearly dying, and they were on us like the Thumb of God.
But Tim McVeigh blew up that building and killed those kids. For about five minutes after that happened I thought, "yeah, the Federal Government was asking for it!" Then I realized what I was thinking.
Fast forward: 9/11 happened. Everything changed for me. Everything. I am still annoyed with people who smirk at that. I realized then that whatever else happened, whatever burdens my government placed upon me, whatever disagreements I had with other Americans about our government's policies or actions, I was an American and I owed that as my allegiance first and foremost, and little else in the final analysis mattered. In looking back, I also realized that many of the things I used to think about politicians I once criticized was excessively negative and somewhat naive.
For we are the first, last, best hope of mankind. We are a bastion of freedom and squabbling, hopelessly fractious yet functional democratic republicanism. We are a kind, generous, wonderful, sometimes crass and stupid people. We are a bulwark against the darkness of totalitarianism, fascism, communism, theocracy, scapegoating of minorities, and intolerance. We are a gentle people who are incredibly dangerous when our ire is aroused. A pliant and yielding and tolerant, even sometimes obsequious, friend--but your worst nightmare as an enemy.
I would have it no other way.
America is represented by two great political parties. The Democratic Party, with its true genesis in the Presidency of Indian slayer and Mob King Andrew Jackson. The Republican Party, with its genesis in the unyielding, bloody-handed, great emancipator Abraham Lincoln. Whatever the Founders' thoughts on political parties, most recognized in the end that they were an inevitability. Over the course of two centuries, because of the ruthless but undeniable logic of Game Theory and the basic structure of the Constitution, it is impossible for us to be ruled by any more and any less than two major political parties. The Third Parties will always serve only two possible roles: a hothouse for ideas that do not yet (and may never) appeal to a majority of Americans, or to serve as a replacement if one of the two major parties should collapse. No other role for them is possible--not because the Constitution says so, but again, because of the logic of Game Theory that is implicit in its construction, that so many people instinctively if not intellectually understand.
No political party will come to power which does not recognize this reality. It will recognize it consciously, or it will recognize it unconsciously, but either way that is the only way the Constitution makes coming to power possible. The only way to change that would be to fundamentally alter the Constitution, a venerable document that for all its quirks still ultimately works the way it is supposed to--so again I would have it no other way.
If you are a person of strong conviction, when you look at the Democrats, they will always annoy you. For while they may say they have strong convictions, ultimately these are extremely diffuse: "help the little guy against the powerful." Because at base, their structure has been the same ever since Andrew Jackson first rode to power: cobble together a vast coalition of tiny interests and try to meld together a whole from that. It's usually awkward and makes no goddamned sense. When Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of an organized political party: I'm a Democrat," he was saying something that had already been true for over a century and is still quite true today. When we joke about John Kerry and "nuance," it's really no different from Clinton's amazing ability to hold two contradictory positions at once, Adlai Stephenson's eggheaded rambling, or Harry S. Truman's ability to simultaneously hold back the Communists in Korea and yet refuse to go to outright war with China in order to make MacArthur happy. (And by the way, firing MacArthur was absolutely the right thing to do.)
The Democrats have also always--always, for 200 years or more--been the "feeling" party, who go on their gut rather than their principles. For while they may hold that they are principled, it's mostly their emotions that matter most to them. If that repels you, you must consider that if you are an American and proud to be one, then you must acknowledge that many Americans work that way too. So if you love America, you must love that aspect of our people as well.
Many a man has loved his wife even when he is utterly bewildered and befuddled because she's on a weepy or angry tear, and many a woman has loved her man even when his stubborn pride has led him into a fistfight she was sure he could have avoided.
If you are a person of strong conviction, when you look at Republicans, they will always disappoint you. They speak of high principle, of unyielding and enduring values, of strict adherence to certain rock-ribbed absolutes. But then they ride to power, and they realize that it's easy to speak in such terms, but now they must actually govern. They then realize that some people who say they share your absolutes don't agree on what those absolutes mean, and in any case there are those pesky people in the opposition who don't agree. Conservative icon Ronald Reagan learned this lesson, and came to the same conclusions many Democratic Presidents did before him: "Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all." Or, better yet: If you are faced with a choice between 80% of what you want and 0%, take the 80%. Just don't get suckered.
The more you insist on absolutes, the more you marginalize yourself in American politics, once again due to the ruthless and inevitable mathematical logic of Game Theory (read a book on it if you haven't already. I don't say that to be condescending, I say it to note that your worldview will be changed if you do so.) Under our current Constitution, there will always be two parties, always, even though they are not mentioned. They are inevitably there, and if you can never find a way to compromise with the other party you will never get much done.
Ralph Nader can never be more than a voice crying in the wilderness, ever. Neither can Michael Badnarik. Neither can Howard Phillips. The very structure of the Constitution makes it impossible.
Even when Lyndon Johnson found himself a Democratic President with overwhelming Democratic majorities in both House and Senate, he couldn't get everything done that he wanted. Indeed, he often found that the easiest way to get done what he wanted was to go to the Republican Minority Leaders in the House and Senate and offer them deals so they would provide the crucial swing vote between Democrats who were on his side and Democrats who were against. Jimmy Carter found himself in a similar position as President, but wound up alienating half his party and being sidelined as an almost worthless President because he could not compromise his principles. This is the real reason he failed, not because he was a "wimp."
Do not fool yourself into thinking that a Republican President in similar circumstances would not have found himself in the same circumstances much of the time.
Yet here is the amazing reality: If an idea's time has come, it will eventually pass into law. 2nd amendment advocates, for all their dire warnings about an oncoming end to the right to bear arms, have suffered a few defeats and yet a stinging series of victories over the last 20 years. More Americans own firearms than ever. Concealed carry permits are now available in a majority of states in the Union, and some allow unconcealed carry without restriction. Meanwhile, First Amendment advocates, for all their bluster that an end to freedom of speech is just around the corner, live in a society where free speech is infinitely more protected than it was in the 1800s. Indeed, in 1800, it was widely understood that the 1st amendment did not protect pornography or blasphemy, and you could still be jailed in some states just for saying out loud that you did not believe that Jesus was God.
25 years ago, home schooling was illegal in much of America. Now it is legal and even praised in most of America. When Franklin Roosevelt first proposed Social Security, he said that he believed that within a decade or so it should be transitioned to a privatized system and, while that took longer than he said it would we will probably have that within another decade or so. School Choice, while still controversial, is now seeping in to state after state, community after community. As it should.
When John F. Kennedy rode to power, the top marginal income tax rate was 90%, and he reduced it to 70%. When Ronald Reagan rode to power, the top marginal rate was 70% and he reduced it to about 30%. When Bill Clinton rode to power, he got it back up to about 40%, and then George W. Bush got it back down to around 35%. When Ronald Reagan rode to power, there were over 100,000 pages to the Federal Register's list of Federal regulations of interstate commerce, and now it's about 60,000 pages. When Reagan rode to power, there were Federal price controls using the Constitution's interstate commerce clause on furniture, clothing, gasoline, food, and a number of other items. Now there are price controls only on food. When Bill Clinton rode to power, there were tarriffs and regulatory barriers to countless forms of international trade; now there are very few. When Bill Clinton rode to power, you could be a welfare dependent your whole life, and when he left it, in order to get on welfare you had to prove you needed it and had to prove you were doing things so that within a few years at most you were no longer dependent upon it.
And note: if you look at the size of the Federal government as opposed to the size of the population and the GDP, the Federal government is smaller today than it has been at several times in our history.
If an idea's time has come, it will come. It will take a while, but it will come. For if it's the right idea, the American People will adopt it sooner or later. We're just a fundamentally conservative people, as is our government, and it will always take a while but we will always in the end make the right choices.
It may take a while. Slavery took us about 80 years to get right. Full civil rights for blacks took us a hundred years more to get right. By comparison, the dependent welfare state was only a blip, and now we're on the right path to fixing that too.
Half a loaf, half a loaf, half a loaf onward. Yet it's not a charge into oblivion, but a charge into what's right. Over a period of years, maybe a period of decades, the American people will eventually find their way to the right answer.
When you look at the candidates for President every four years, you must look at all of this. The Republican will ride to power speaking of stern, strong, unyielding principles that he will inevitably compromise upon. The Democrat will inevitably rise to power out of a squabbling mess of fractious ideologies, attempting to meld them into a semi-coherent whole. Neither one will be virginal, both will be a little full of shit--but both of them (usually) sincere. In most cases, both will genuinely want what is best for America. Your only question will be whether you think their vision is the right vision, and whether you believe he will govern responsibly, and will take the duties of his office sincerely.
But you must recognize that compromise is an utterly unavoidable requirement of the President's office. If he couldn't compromise, he would never be his party's nominee, let alone be elected President.
So: When you look at the Republican nominee for President, you will see a man who speaks of unyielding principle, who will nevertheless compromise principle if he wants to get anything done. When you look at the Democratic nominee for President, you will see a man who has compromised like crazy just to get where he is, who must nevertheless have certain principles he will govern by.
Your only choice, unless you wish to marginalize yourself by voting third-party, is to cast your fate with one of these two men (or women).
So every four years we have these things called national conventions, at which we nominate two men (or women) to be President. At these conventions, each candidate, however he arrived at the nomination, defines his vision for governance over the next four years, and how he pledges to govern. In that moment, and in the subsequent debates, you decide which of these two makes the most sense--knowing that, inevitably, whoever wins is going to let you down sometimes, and make you proud sometimes.
Is it a fucking mess? Yeah. But it's how Our People have been doing business for the last couple of centuries, and if you really get right down to it, it's been working pretty fucking well, all things considered.
I'll close with a quote that my friend (I hope she'll let me call her friend) Sheila O'Malley is fond of:
"'This race and this country and this life produced me,' he said. 'I shall express myself as I am.'" --James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Watch the conventions. See what they say. Ask yourself if you like what they say, and if you believe them. Then vote. Or if you don't like either of them, vote third party, or don't vote at all.
It's the American way.
