At a very basic level, it is a very good thing that the incoming president of the venerable American Enterprise Institute has a particular expertise in policies affecting poverty and the relief thereof.
One need know nothing of the managerial skills of Robert Doar, announced Jan. 18 as the think tank’s soon-to-be president, to have high hopes for his tenure. Doar, AEI’s existing Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies, will succeed the excellent Arthur Brooks on July 1. A longtime veteran of public administration of poverty-relief programs in New York City and New York state, Doar earned plaudits for how he implemented welfare reform in the Empire State.
Doar was a leading member of a joint working group with the center-left Brookings Institution on how to find common ground on “poverty and opportunity.” Notable, for conservatives, is that the joint report’s first focus is on the importance of family structure and that the opening lines of that section of the report declare in no uncertain terms that “marriage matters.” Doar also is the editor and co-author of a report called “a safety net that works,” which aims to reform federal anti-poverty programs to make them more effective and efficient.
As AEI is widely seen as a conservative organization, having its new chief focused on poverty is good both for the image and the substance of conservatism writ large. It takes no genius to discern that conservatives have an unfortunate reputation for being largely indifferent to poverty, unfair as that reputation may be. That image stems, in large part, from the fact that conservatives tend to oppose regimented, centralized, big-government approaches to poverty relief; but the establishment media presents such approaches as the very definition of poverty fighting, rather than as a mere option for how to address poverty (and one often discredited by experience, at that).
Doar’s prominent new post might help combat that unfortunate, and largely unfair, image of indifference.
Yet conservatism itself bears some blame for its image. So tough is the battle against the expensive and ineffective big-government approach that the conservative movement spends so much time opposing the bad and too little proposing the good. Too many conservative politicians, taking cues from too many conservative activists, make anti-poverty policy a priority. And, all too often, their rhetoric on the issue goes little further than the rah-rah enthusiasms of the “rising tide lifts all boats” variety. (That’s why, for example, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was able to strike a nerve with his platitudinous and rambling but emotionally satisfying jeremiad a few weeks ago against rich free-marketers. Modern political nature abhors a rhetorical vacuum.)
But poverty-fighting should be at the heart of true conservatism, with the example of the late, great Jack Kemp always in our minds. The Jack Kemp Foundation is trying to keep alive that legacy, and the recent Republican Congress, with leadership from (among others) Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., achieved key success along those lines with the inclusion of “Opportunity Zone” provisions in the successful 2017 tax reform bill.
To have Doar at the helm of AEI will help keep the mind of conservatives, and the general public, on the needs and opportunities for better public policy combating poverty. We must all understand that it is difficult to conserve what is best in a society if intractable poverty infects that society’s soil. Doar should help keep us focused, and his ideas could help that focus bear good fruit.
