We’re in a strange historical trough at the moment, as the economy gets worse and worse. Laura McKenna, at 11D, fears the CitiGroup crisis is worse than reports have told us, and says “Rumor has it that Citibank is going to go bankrupt.” So as public affairs exhibit all the signs of panic on the one hand, Paul Krugman describes “the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis” on the other, a vacuum reminiscent of the interregnum between 1932 and 1933 when “the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action.”
But the present crisis of leadership seems more than an accident of history. While the new administration struggles to be born, the old seems determined to perpetuate itself and do, from my perspective, as much damage as it possibly can while it still holds the reins of power. The Bush team’s promulgation of “midnight regulations” and its shifting of large numbers of its political appointees into high-level civil service positions, a strategy called burrowing in, in order to protect them from being fired and thereby perpetuate their influence, have been the most reported of the outgoing administration’s efforts to thwart the public will–together with speculation that Bush may issue blanket pardons to many of his most vulnerable appointees who have committed crimes during his lawless administration for which somebody might decide to prosecute them. Add to these disturbing developments the present congressional stalemate over aid to the auto industry and Henry Paulson’s foot-dragging over the next stage of the $700b rescue plan, and the trough becomes a slough.
Indeed, across the spectrum of the conservative movement, so-called, there seems to be a determination to continue to defend and perpetuate bankrupt ideology that has been falsified by events and by and large repudiated by the public. Mike Huckabee has a new book entitled Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America and is on a tour promoting it, looking every inch like a presidential candidate again. Sarah Palin has been on a victory tour, finding new venues for cognitive dissonance, and wherever she goes she speaks for the old time religion. David Brooks predicts this week that control of the Republican Party will remain with “Traditionalists,” because “Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists,” and “Traditionalists have the institutions.”
Brooks goes on to argue that conservatism has rigidified into Traditionalist ownership of conservative mythology. Here are a couple of of observations that I think are insightful in that regard.
Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.
This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity.
And bogus or not, this mythology gives its adherents who still hold power in Washington a license to attempt to shape the future in its image even in the face of resounding defeat at the polls.
All the signs seem to point to a pragmatic Obama administration rather than an ideological one. I find this very hopeful. David Sanger predicts that Obama will govern from the center right of his own party, and that is hopeful too. Both Brooks and Sanger are predicting an Obama administration characterized by thoughtfulness and creativity rather than ideology as they survey the choices Obama is advertised to be making for his cabinet and White House staff. As Sanger puts it:
The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.
President Obama will need broad and diverse support if he is to govern effectively. His first moves seem calculated to garner such support and to maintain it in the future; though during its early days in office the new administration will need to do a good deal of house cleaning to disencumber itself from the Bush administration’s last ditch efforts to bind that future.