WHY THE RIGHT WENT WRONG
Conservatism - From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
E J Dionne Jr
Simon & Schuster
532 pages; $30
TOO DUMB TO FAIL
How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)
Matt K Lewis
Hachette Books
230 pages; $28
"May you live in interesting times" is said to be a Chinese curse. The same kind of curse may apply to people who support interesting parties. There is no doubt that the Republicans are more interesting than the Democrats at the moment - their rhetoric is more incendiary, divisions more profound, behaviour more outlandish. But the very antics that encourage people to tune in to the presidential debates also discourage them from pulling the voting lever: Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House in November seem to be getting higher largely because she is a safe pair of hands.
Some of the responsibility for this rests with Donald Trump's singular presidential campaign. No previous American political candidate has broken the rules of politics so completely - labelling entire ethnic groups as "rapists," for example. And no recent American political candidate has blurred the line between politics and entertainment so thoroughly.
But, two things make Mr Trump's candidacy both more interesting and worrying. The first is that he's more of an exclamation mark than an aberration. The Republican Party has been playing with fire for years: This is a political organisation that, because of its intransigence, has closed down America's government, and has nominated the ridiculously unqualified Sarah Palin for the vice presidency. The second is that Mr Trump is not always wrong. But, for all his carnival-barking persona, Mr Trump has rightly condemned the establishment for supporting tax breaks for the rich and government handouts for corporate cronies.
Why the Right Went Wrong and Too Dumb to Fail are attempts to make sense of all this. On the face of it E J Dionne Jr and Matt K Lewis could hardly be more different. Mr Dionne is a member of the liberal establishment - a fellow of the Brookings Institution and a Washington Post columnist. Mr Lewis is a product of the conservative counter-establishment as reinvented by the Internet revolution. He writes regularly for The Caller, as well as The Week and The Daily Beast, and records a weekly podcast, "Matt Lewis and the News." But they both agree that the buffoonery on the right is bad not just for conservatism but for America.
Mr Dionne's book is the more substantial of the two: A history of the right that also finds time to explore some of the highways and byways of the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Mr Dionne argues that there is nothing new under the conservative sun. The American right has been defined by a cycle of broken promises and bitter disappointments since the 1960s. Right-wing politicians whip up their troops by promising to abolish big government or restore traditional values, only to compromise with reality when in office. And those troops react to disappointment by embracing an ever more reactionary brand of radicalism.
George W Bush's presidency was conservatism's most ambitious attempt to come to terms with its internal contradictions. But, rather than resolving conservatism's contradictions, Mr Bush heightened them. His big-spending ways infuriated small-government conservatives; his support for immigration reform infuriated nativists; and his general incompetence, demonstrated at its worst in the war of choice in Iraq, led to a collective nervous breakdown on the right.
Mr Dionne is notably fair-minded. Though he makes no bones about his own liberal sympathies, he tries hard to understand the frustrations of white working-class voters who have seen their living standards stagnate and cultural values ridiculed. Unfortunately, his book is much too long and frequently disorganised.
Mr Lewis's knockabout style is a relief after Mr Dionne's workmanlike prose. He argues that the conservative movement has been captured by "empty-headed talking point reciters, rookie politicians who've never managed anything in their lives, media clowns such as Donald Trump, dim bulbs in tight pants or short skirts, professionally outraged shout-fest talking heads and total political neophytes." He notes that the movement is full of overdogs pretending to be underdogs. Ted Cruz was educated at Princeton and Harvard Law School and is married to a Goldman Sachs executive. He accuses these assorted freaks of caring more about stoking outrage than governing.
Some of his argument is familiar. The commentator David Frum has emphasised the way the party has been captured by self-interested elites. Some of it is self-contradictory: Is the problem that conservatives are amateurs or that they are professionals who are more interested in outrage than good government? And some of it is mistaken: Under the most recent Republican president, know-nothings did much less harm than neoconservatives.
Both authors conclude their books with suggestions on how to fix the right. Mr Dionne argues that conservatives need to recapture the reformist spirit: They have to come to terms with the modern world in order to steer it in a more congenial direction. Mr Lewis argues that conservatives must recover the enthusiasm for ideas they had in the Reagan era.
Neither recommendation is particularly convincing. The right has powerful incentives to continue on the same path. The fact that the electorate is smaller and whiter in off-year elections means the Republican Party has a strong grip on the House of Representatives, and the fact that even a wooden candidate like Mitt Romney came within a few points of winning the 2012 election means it can justify doubling down on the same old strategy.
Moreover, the forces that are disfiguring the right are likely to spread in future years, consuming the Democrats in much the same way as they have consumed the Republicans. Interesting times don't remain confined to one part of the political spectrum for very long.
©2016 The New York Times News Service
