You could drive from Key West to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and never cross a state carried by Hillary Clinton. Thirty-two hundred miles, from the subtropics to the high north; from the Gulf Stream to glacier country. So much country and almost all of it colored red on the political map.
There is, in that map, a validation of the old conservative faith. That would be the one that is suspicious of government in general and believes that to the extent we must have government, it is easier to restrain it and housebreak it when it is kept local.
In their postmortems of her defeat, many analysts faulted Hillary Clinton for never articulating a compelling theme for her campaign, for never giving people a reason to vote for her. Which does, indeed, seem like a pretty serious oversight. She did manage to come up with a slogan, “Stronger Together,” but it seems entirely plausible that it might have repelled more voters than it attracted. Those voters didn’t want to be part of some grand political crusade in which they would have been allied with voters from New York and Los Angeles, didn’t want to march in that parade, everyone in step, with Washington playing the tune.
The cause of limited and local government may not have rolled up a big score in the form of actual votes for the libertarian candidate. And Trump may be the furthest thing from a small “c” conservative. Still, the election map makes a good case for weakening the hand of the federal government. The election was a referendum, of sorts, on Washington, and voters in those vast domains of red made themselves plain. They believe Washington is both incompetent and intrusive. Not to mention corpulent.
Donald Trump doesn’t seem particularly interested in making the government smaller or less intrusive. He has promised to change the way things are done in Washington so that America will “start winning again,” and maybe he can break Washington to his considerable will and make it “work.” Perhaps he can repeal much of the work that Obama did with his pen and phone, and do things like, for instance, take Washington’s foot off the neck of the coal industry.
In which case, the voters in some of the red sections of the republic may herald his regime and its accomplishments. But the voters in the blue states are almost certain not to. They are already angry and in California some of them are even muttering about breaking off from the rest of the nation. This is secession, and it has been tried before. People along the way from Key West to Coeur d’Alene could tell Californians all about it.
Let’s assume California decides not to take its Silicon Valley and its Hollywood and storm off in a huff—that it sticks around through a four-year stretch under President Trump. It seems unlikely the state will become any less blue. Because the divide between red and blue is real. People in, for instance, St. Joe, Missouri, aren’t likely to start thinking more like residents of Manhattan’s Upper West Side any time soon, no matter what President Trump does or does not do. The divide is cultural, and government would not be able to close it except by force, which would have to favor one side or the other and, thus, make things worse.
Which leads to another validation, in this election, of the fundamental conservative case. Namely that we have invested far too much in the office of president. Obama’s supporters, of course, went to ridiculous excesses of faith in their man. He was going to heal the divide and bring us all together. No red or blue, just the one America and so on. And he would do it through the sheer wonderful force of his own personality and life history. He would halt the rise of the oceans and then walk upon them.
His loyal supporters have kept the faith and are out there saying things like, “Obama is still a powerful force for the generation that grew up working for him. ‘He’s our Jesus Christ.’ ”
Trump’s loyalists may not achieve that rhetorical excess but plainly believe in his ability to “Make America Great Again.” He will get things done through, presumably, sheer power of will. Because he is strong.
But strongmen get things done by force. That’s what they know. And the people they steamroll don’t necessarily remember them kindly. Strongmen make enemies and those enemies must be dealt with; to do less is to show weakness and this would likely be fatal.
The necessary conservative view of the strongman is one of extreme suspicion. When you elect a strongman to fix everything, you give away a portion of your sovereignty. And what you get back is, for instance, people who promise to fix your local schools, from Washington. And that would include making decisions about who can and can’t use which bathrooms.
We invest far too much hope in the people we elect as president. No one who is elected president could possibly live up to the expectations he or she has cultivated. But we give the president that airplane. We play music and stand when he enters the room. We watch him on the news constantly, even if he’s just playing golf.
We allow presidents, in short, to get away with playing at being some sort of democratic sovereign and a moral force. Obama was especially prone to this kind of insulting excess. The American president is a politician and, necessarily, a very successful one. Success in that line of work, though, should be a disqualification for delivering sermons.
So it is good news for conservatives that neither candidate in the recent election could qualify for moral leadership and that the winner won’t be able to fake it. We all remember him as he was before his election. We hear that Donald Trump will do damage to the image of the “presidency” and somehow be a permanent stain on the office. Then again, maybe he will treat it like a job that comes with a so-so house and a really cool airplane. Either way his tenure will serve to demystify and desanctify the office, and that is way overdue.
The election, if we’re lucky, should renew interest in the old conservative appreciation for smaller government and the rule of law, not men. We might well be looking at a few months of the usual feverish activity that accompanies the arrival of any new administration. But that will pass and people in the blue states will calm down and get on with their lives, as will the people in those vast spaces between Key West and Coeur d’Alene.
Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
