“Whatever the road to power, that is
the road which will be trod.”
—Edmund Burke

For years, or at least for that stretch of time between the heady days of Theodore Roosevelt and the hapless days of Jimmy Carter, something called the Eastern establishment benevolently ruled over America. For years, or at least between the demon days of Franklin Roosevelt and the dog days of Jimmy Carter, this behemoth pulled the country’s strings, but never its own punches. If Americans wanted only to be left alone, the liberal establishment was there to plot them into unnecessary wars. If Americans wished to explain away any and all grievances, that same establishment was there to be conveniently whipped.

It was only a matter of time before there was something called a conservative counterestablishment. Enter Sidney Blumenthal. A card-carrying member of an embattled, almost endangered species, Blumenthal set out a few years ago to push what’s left of the liberal establishment further leftward. In the face of the Reagan revolution he has tried to counter the counterestablishment from the pages of three publications. Starting out with the socialist In These Times, he moved upward to The (Cautiously Liberal) New Republic before finally establishing himself at the Washington Post.

For years, Blumenthal notes, conservatives skewered their New Class enemies, meaning liberals, intellectuals, bureaucrats, and other equally unproductive leeches on the body politic. But on the night of Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration, it would be the “ideological spoilsmen” of the right who applauded their new President before they “dispersed into the Washington night and showed up at their New Class jobs the next morning.”

Where did they come from? Sidney Blumenthal has written an entire book to answer this very question. Barely 25 years ago conservatism in America was little more than a “remnant.” Huddling around National Review were ex-Communists, free marketeers, and Burkean traditionalists whom William F. Buckley sought to mold into a unified movement. Fusion was the Buckley goal, but a shaky truce was the best that he could manage.

With the defeat of Barry Goldwater, conservatives woke up to the realization that ideological assertion could not be automatically converted into electoral victories—which explains the emphasis on grass roots politics. With the election of Richard Nixon, conservatives awakened again to a new realization, namely that their drive for both the White House and ideological consensus had failed to produce enough ideologically pure bodies to staff the new administration—which explains the proliferation of conservative think tanks during the 1970’s.

With President Richard Nixon, conservatives quickly grew disenchanted—hence the wildly unsuccessful Ashbrook candidacy in 1972. With Nixon’s departure they began to look beyond the Ford interregnum. Hence the narrowly unsuccessful Reagan candidacy in 1976.

Blumenthal is not interested in rehashing electoral politics from Nixon to Reagan. He is no left-of-liberal Teddy White chronicler of the making and unmaking of recent American Presidents. What he is deeply interested in is the recent stitching together of conservative remnants to create the complex quilt that is the Reagan phenomenon. The result is a book that is part intellectual history, part institutional history, part biography, and part gossip. We learn what Milton Friedman thinks, how the American Enterprise Institute was built, when Jude Wanniski discovered conservatism, and why Norman Podhoretz really turned against George McGovern.

Whatever his genre, Blumenthal is out to make one simple point: Counterestablishmcnt conservatism is essentially un-American. Apparently suffering for years under the burden of conservative attacks on the patriotism of the left, Blumenthal is out to turn the tables. He begins by positing a peaceful America inhabited almost exclusively by pragmatic liberals. These liberals were too busy solving America’s problems ever to notice the intruder in their garden.

Lurking somewhere in the wilderness were “shadow liberals” who were uncomfortable in the role of peaceful cultivators: They were “devoted to ideology, not tradition.” Their selfappointed charge was to destroy, not build. Here Blumenthal concedes his subjects a bit of old-fashioned Americanism. Theirs has been “an American story of self-invention.” These were conservatives who had no past to restore, so they created an identity out of a hodge-podge of European ideas. Their founding father was Adam Smith, who regarded 18th-century British mercantilism as a mistake. Their Austrian uncle was Friedrich von Hayek, a “fossil” who looked upon the entire 20th century “as a mistake.”

Not only were these nascent counterestablishmentarians shadowy un-Americans, but they were also openly un-Republican. Ronald Reagan, according to Blumenthal, didn’t bother to reinvent the Grand Old Party; he simply “transcended” it. The party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (and big government) became a haven for conservative ideologues. The party of Harding and Coolidge (and Kellogg-Briand Pacts) became a network of Cold Warriors.

Borrowing from the “remnant” saved and displayed by William F. Buckley, these new conservatives of the 1980’s have clothed themselves in the armor of Old Right Warriors like Whittaker Chambers. Chambers joined the Communist Party because he believed it to be the wave of the future; and he left the party “still believing in the inevitability of world communism.” Russell Kirk is another. Kirk was so “militantly anti-modern” that he attacked the essence of America: the automobile and the Chamber of Commerce business culture. Even Buckley himself cannot pass the Blumenthal loyalty test, because he has expressed cautious doubts about universal suffrage.

From the fringe of the remnant, Blumenthal proceeds to unravel the many-layered garment which, he is convinced, conceals the subversive motives of the counterestablishment. Whether sun-belt businessmen or Jewish intellectuals, all share the outsider label. If they are truly American, it is only because they have divined Norman Podhoretz’s “dirty little secret.” They wanted to make it; and they figured out how to do so. What could be more American than that? Russell Kirk may be content to climb the circular staircase in his Gothic house, but more modern conservatives prefer to climb the ladder of American success.

Shameless self-promoters, they have written the right books at the right moment. They have made the right marriages and moved into the right neighborhoods. Witness the meteoric rise of an obscure economist named Arthur Laffer. A “cipher” within the Nixon administration, a sensitive “physical absurdity” (Blumenthal seldom resists an occasion for a personal remark), Laffer left the government and discovered the wonders of walking on the supply side.

By the late 1970’s he had lost weight and found southern California. Soon he would be mingling socially with Reagan’s “Millionaire Backers.” Eventually Nancy and Ron would be spending evenings at the Laffers, complete with a “squirming weasel” tossed into Nancy’s lap by a Laffer offspring. Despite that surprise, the Reagans returned. “I had a lot of ‘ins’ in that group,” Laffer conceded. “He was always the well-connected Reaganite,” Blumenthal concludes.

Blumenthal has little time for traditional Republican politicians. They are almost irrelevant to his story. In fact, Blumenthal posits a teeter-totter theory of modern politics: As parties decline, ideologies rise. In this age of 30-second political ads and photogenic candidates, parties have become shells of their former selves. Into these suddenly empty shells have jumped politicized ideologues. But why are there so many more conservative players in this particular shell game? And if America really is a nation of pragmatists, and the Republican Party really has become a haven for ideologues, why is it the national Democratic Party that is in such a sorry fix?

At this point Blumenthal can only trot out Ronald Reagan, the allpurpose answer-man, as in “conservatism would never have become a mass cultural experience without him.” If Reagan has done nothing else in his lengthy political career, he has at least provided a convenient excuse for liberalism’s failures.

Reagan’s long-running role during the 1980’s has been to convert conservative ideology into national mythology. The Great Communicator is, according to Blumenthal, the Great Mythmaker, who believes that once upon a time Americans were pure and innocent, not to mention individually motivated and individually successful. Unlike some of his conservative brethren, Reagan has no interest in restoring the Age of Feudalism or the England of Edmund Burke. Blumenthal’s bet is that the President would settle for 19th-century America. Why? Because Blumenthal’s Reagan is at heart a Social Darwinist, albeit a Social Darwinist with a human face. He champions not the self-made man, who would work his way to individual greatness by crushing those who would stand in his way, but the self-indulgent man, who would spend his way to societal prosperity by buying from those who would stand in his way.

Historically, the GOP, with its roots deeply embedded in the 19th century, has been the party of businessmen, Lincoln reformers, and professional pols. Now, it has been captured by a devious counterestablishment, which exists apart from the Republican Party and outside of American history. But Blumenthal has discovered a ray of hope for traditional Republicans (and all Americans): There has been no realignment of political parties, only a realignment of politicized elites.

But can the shift of Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick from the Democratic to the Republican Parties account for the Reagan revolution? Of course not. Can even the coming of age of an entire generation of youngish conservative intellectuals explain the results of the 1980 and 1984 elections? Of course not. The rise to power of a conservative President and conservative ideas is an important story, but it is far from the whole story.

Ronald Reagan was swept to power by middle- and lower-middle-class voters who were tired of embarrassing setbacks abroad, beset by challenges to traditional values at home, and anxious for an American economic revival. Many of these Reagan votes were cast by former Democrats; but, as Kevin Phillips has pointed out in Post-Conservative America, the 1980’s have produced neither a party nor an elite realignment but a “dealignment” away from the two major parties.

According to a Gallup poll, Reagan in 1980 drew only 86 percent of the traditional Republican vote, which was the lowest of any party nominee since Goldwater’s 80 percent in 1964. Phillips does note that Reagan’s share of the vote was 12 points higher than that of Goldwater, but only two points greater than Gerald Ford’s showing in 1976. Such figures are not the stuff of historic party realignments.

Furthermore, no previous party realignment produced a split Congress or occurred during a period of declining voter turnout. Writing before the 1984 Reagan landslide, Phillips makes a still persuasive case that the Reagan Presidency may be only a stepping-stone to a more populist-oriented conservatism. The allegiance of those first-time Republican voters is tenuous at best. Their votes were conditional votes. A more permanent attachment to the Republican Party would require a revitalized American presence in the world, a growing American economy, and/or the enactment of the New Right’s social agenda. The current Iran-Contra fiasco threatens the first; the jury is still very much out on the second; and Reagan has so far failed on the third. Such debacles, doubts, and defeats are not the stuff of permanent party realignments.

If such a realignment should occur in the 1990’s, it is not likely to be achieved because of Republican adherence to the Laffer curve or Friedman-inspired monetarism. Nor will it result from a rush among the middle and lower-middle classes to devour the latest George Gilder treatise or add to their collection of Firing Line videotapes. Party realignment will not come courtesy of a genial White House host but in response to a major crisis or the passion of a majoritarian leader.

G.K. Chesterton once observed that in America the most democratic man may also be the most despotic man. When he wrote those words he was thinking of Andrew Jackson—a man of passion, who identified himself with ordinary people, a President who rode to power on the wings of the first major party realignment in American history.

There are many superficial similarities between Jackson and Reagan. Both were frustrated in their initial attempts to capture the White House. Both eventually won larger mandates for their second terms. Both held office as old men. Both preached minimalist government. Both rode out of the West to storm the Washington establishment. Both attacked corrupt and lethargic special interests. Here, however, the parallel ends.

Before reaching the White House, Jackson was a genuine American hero who suffered often and always demanded much of himself Reagan, on the other hand, was a genuine American celebrity who, once he discovered Hollywood, seldom demanded much of himself And now, having attained the White House, he has failed to demand very much of his countrymen.

Perhaps the 1990’s will be different. Perhaps there will then be a party realignment to match the elite realignment that Blumenthal outlined. If so, the current counterestablishment will be as irrelevant as books which attempted to dissect it. If Kevin Phillips is right, a “post-conservative America” will have little use for the conservative intellectuals Sidney Blumenthal finds so fascinating—and so infuriating.

The game plan of these conservatives, according to Blumenthal, is to “transcend time” by ushering in a permanent economic recovery shielded by an eternally vigilant Strategic Defense Initiative. Blumenthal thinks that the odds are poor for the ultimate success of either goal. Phillips seems to agree with the former, and he wrote his book before the unveiling of the latter. However, they disagree when it comes to predicting what will follow the Age of Reagan. Blumenthal comforts himself with the thought that American conservatives will humbly retire to their more convincing role as “shadow liberals.” Anti-government nay-saying, so long as it is done from the political sidelines, is Sidney Blumenthal’s idea of a safe and sane American conservatism.

Perhaps Mr. Blumenthal will be proved right. Perhaps by the 1990’s Americans will have awakened to the morning after Reagan. Perhaps by then Americans of all political persuasions will have rediscovered the reassuring joy of either hugging or whipping a newly risen—and oddly comfortable—liberal establishment.

Don’t bet on it. The liberal establishment is not likely to be restored. And the counterestablishment? Is it likely to survive? Well it might, but should it not, the 1980’s could portend a dealignment of elites to match Kevin Phillips’ dealignment of parties. And if Mr. Phillips proves to be the better prognosticator, the Sidney Blumenthals of the 1990’s will be singing a very different political tune.

 

[The Rise of the Counter-Establishment From Conservative Ideology to Political Power, by Sidney Blumenthal (New York: Times Books) $19.95]