What I Learned from David Brooks

At a recent lecture, this conservative favorite had a few tips for progressives.

By Asheesh Siddique, Princeton University
Monday December 5, 2005

Nobody would mistake New York Times columnist David Brooks for a liberal. A former editor at The Weekly Standard, Brooks has established himself as one of America’s leading conservative commentators through his op-ed columns, frequent television appearances, and best-selling books. Partisans on both sides of the aisle hold Brooks in high regard for his incisive and creative commentary on the state of modern conservatism and American democracy. So, not too many people think of him as a liberal political strategist. But in a speech examining America’s contemporary political moment at Princeton University this past Thursday, Brooks – perhaps unwittingly – charted a course by which progressives can triumph over the right wing in both the battle of ideas and the war at the polls.

Brooks delivered the keynote address at a major conference on the past, present, and future of American conservatism. Over three days, some of the biggest names in the history of the modern political right – activist Midge Decter, former National Review publisher William Rusher, George Nash (author of The Conservative Movement in America), journalists George Will and Michael Barone, and morality czar-cum-gambler Bill Bennett – assembled to discuss and debate topics ranging from conservative economic policy to the legacies of movement godfathers Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It was a pow-wow of intellectual giants – even movement ‘boy genius’ Karl Rove made an under-the-radar appearance.

While all these speakers undoubtedly made their own impressions on the right-leaning attendees (most of the students in the audience were College Republicans), Brooks’ address held the most insight for progressives. Addressing a packed auditorium so full that some attendees had to watch the speech on a telecast, Brooks began with the requisite lame jab at his Times colleague (and Princeton prof) Paul Krugman (“a socialist,” in his view) before dispensing some seriously useful wisdom.

Conservatism, Brooks argued, has reached a moment of “crisis” largely due to its own success. Even as conservatism reigns triumphant in all three branches of government, he noted that the movement is “intellectually moribund,” “lacks a governing philosophy,” and is fraught with internal divisions. Brooks cited two examples demonstrating his thesis: President Bush’s failure to win enough support for Social Security privatization – a dream of the right’s intelligentsia since the Reagan days – even as Republicans dominate Congress; and massive government spending by the Bush administration – a key break from the right’s long-standing campaign to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” as Grover Norquist famously enjoined.

If Brooks is right, then progressives now have a great opportunity to take back America from the divided and internally chaotic right. Brooks offered some handy tips. First, progressive intellectuals need to become more explicitly philosophical. Brooks noted that almost every young aspiring conservative activist is enamored with some major intellectual from whom they claim to draw ideas and inspiration, be it Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, F. A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman. Yet on the liberal side, how many young activists embrace figures like Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty as intellectual heroes? How much time do we spend discussing and debating what the philosophical underpinnings of our policies should be? Not very much – we usually like to jump straight to debates over policy. But as Brooks suggests, if progressives strived to couch our activism more cerebrally, we would appear more intellectually rigorous and consistent in marketing our agenda to the American people. Perhaps that’s the cure to the central charge that we often confront: that liberals don’t have any ideas, don’t stand for anything, and instead simply react to the conservative agenda.

Second, Brooks advised both sides to resist moving to the political center. “Centrists are stupid,” he stated emphatically. “There is no intellectual center in this country. To call for a center is to call for nothing. [‘Centrism’] is not a set of policies or ideas.” He’s couldn’t be more on the money. When ostensibly ‘liberal’ interest groups emphasize the need for “modernizers of the American progressive political tradition,” they invariably advocate a mellowing of progressives’ historic commitments to the interests of minorities, labor groups, and the disenfranchised, in favor of embracing the corporate and elite interests that we so often assail the right wing for embodying. Even though Brooks may disagree with our core principles of democratic participation, equal opportunity, and individual liberty, he’s no doubt right that we abandon them at our own peril.

Finally, Brooks suggested that the road to an electoral majority for either party now lies in appealing to voters in exurban communities, such as Loudoun County, Virginia (about 25 miles outside Washington, DC), Douglas County, Colorado (located between Denver and Colorado Springs), and Kendall County, Illinois (on the outskirts of Chicago). Residents of these areas aren’t deeply wedded to either party – instead, they’re concerned above all with having, in Brooks’ words, “a safe place to raise their kids.” While his argument was geared toward maintaining Republican dominance in Washington , progressives should take note. A winning strategy for taking back America has to promise the creation of a higher trust, lower risk society in an age when citizens’ concerns focus overwhelmingly on minimizing the negative impact of globalization on traditional patterns of life. It makes a lot of sense – we vote for the candidates we think will safeguard our high standard of living. With the public’s confidence in Republican management of the economy at rock-bottom levels, progressives have a chance to appeal to these voters by emphasizing how we’ll bring back prosperity to ordinary Americans.

Though Brooks wouldn’t be happy with a progressive majority controlling the House, Senate, and (eventually) the White House, his lecture last Thursday laid out a positive strategy for progressives to beat back the right and change America for the better. By standing steadfast in our principles, articulating them intelligently, and responding to the real concerns of voters, progressives can gain a political majority and move the nation forward. Who’d have thought it would take a conservative to tell us that?

 
Asheesh Kapur Siddique is editor of the Princeton Progressive Nation.