Steve Hayward is a bright guy. He’s well-educated, a pretty darned good writer and a first-rate historian, but his recent diatribe in the Washington Post against what he perceives as a “brain dead” conservative movement can only lead one to conclude that he hasn’t read much of what he himself has written.
He, like more than a few of his colleagues who spend most of their time writing for elite publications or listening to NPR, seems to believe that a successful conservatism must reject anyone with an audience of people who might actually vote.
He correctly posits that the modern movement began as a movement of ideas, but misses that it took an army of men and women who could translate those ideas into language that could motivate voters to create a real political movement.
Hayward admires Ronald Reagan and penned a detailed chronicle of the Reagan Era, but missed one of the secrets of Reagan’s genius. Not just bright and likeable, Reagan consistently communicated with the average voter on many levels that were beyond the capability of most of his contemporaries.
As a Midwesterner, graduate of a non-elite college, sportscaster and actor, Reagan knew that to succeed he had to develop an ability to reach people in ways they could understand. He developed a style that allowed him to do just that.
We now know that Reagan was addicted to ideas, wrote much of his own material, read extensively, thought deeply and was the author of his own agenda, but he was constantly underestimated throughout his career by those who considered themselves better educated, sophisticated and astute than he.
What Hayward misses as he sniffs at the “tackiness” of the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys of the world is that an effective political movement must include philosophers, thinkers, policy wonks and people capable of selling their ideas to a broader audience.
In earlier ages, philosophers attached themselves to wealthy nobles or, like Marx, dreamed of the day when a Lenin would emerge to put an army behind their ideas. In today’s more democratic world, philosophers and intellectuals line up with populizers who can win broad support for ideas that might otherwise languish on the shelves of obscure libraries or be talked to death at a Philadelphia Society gathering.
Anyone who has made an even cursory study of the history of the modern conservative movement realizes that Hayward is simply wrong when he alleges that today’s conservatives are “brain dead.”
The fact is that there are more serious conservative thinkers, writers and policy experts working on applying the principles that have come down to them from the Hayeks, Friedmans, Kirks and Buckleys than at any time in memory.
Some of Hayward’s colleagues among the conservative elite urged us after the 2008 elections to abandon principles espoused by Buckley and others because they allegedly no longer held much appeal to an electorate no longer enamored of free markets, limited government and traditional values.
Perhaps it’s because those attending today’s tea parties and town halls still respond to these traditional conservative appeals that leads folks like Hayward to dismiss them as irrelevant or even counterproductive.
Hayward grudgingly grants that some of the new crop of communicators whose style so offends him do their research and even look to the academy for facts and ideas. One suspects, however, that Hayward wishes Glen Beck would “outgrow” his emotive style to emulate an NPR interviewer. Instead, it is precisely Beck’s disc jockey roots that enable him to communicate with viewers NPR will never reach.
It’s easy for our “intellectuals” to dismiss populizers as tacky or unsophisticated, but such snobbery is a disservice to the movement and to the ideas they themselves would dearly love to popularize if they but had the talent.
David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union.
