Conservatives: Are They Now Softheaded? : Ideology: The left used to offer government programs as the answer to every problem. The right now says the same thing about the free market.

Certain images are traditionally associated with the two dominant ideologies. Conservatives are “hard,” liberals “soft.” Those on the right are realistic, while romanticism charac terizes the left. Conservatives see humanity’s limitations; liberals talk about the perfectibility of man.

But today these images have been stood on their head. The past generation has seen an extraordinary reversal. Liberals have become, as a matter of political necessity, more pragmatic. Conservatives have traveled the opposite path, embracing increasingly fanciful and politically implausible programs. While liberals have their feet more firmly on the ground, it is conservatives who seem to have their heads in the clouds. The problem with that--as chastened liberals can tell you--is there isn’t always enough oxygen up there for clear thinking.

Where today’s conservatives leave terra firma is their unquestioning faith in markets--the right’s answer to liberals’ belief in government solutions. Expanding markets and cutting taxes is the answer to every--not just some, but every--social problem. It matters not that the United States relies on market approaches more than other countries, or that the past 12 years saw us move even farther in that direction, often with discouraging results. If problems remain, that is only because we still haven’t gone far enough--the response of all true ideologues. This ideological fixation on market solutions leaves conservatives on the losing side of many political issues. They preach free trade, while the public craves protection. They fought family-leave legislation and resisted increasing the minimum wage, both popular ideas. Their economic program basically relies on capital-gains tax cuts. Yet, polls show overwhelming public desire to raise, not lower, taxes on the wealthy.

Overall, conservatives end up looking as though they care far more about the wealthy than about working people. Just as liberals did before them, they have lost touch with the middle class and its concerns. With enemies like these, Bill Clinton won’t need many friends.

Politics aside, the conservative agenda appears unserious as public policy. There is no problem, no matter how large--education, health care, poverty--that conservatives won’t promise to fix without spending a dime. Once they argued that problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them; now they claim spending is irrelevant to fixing problems. What began as a fair rejoinder to liberal proposals has evolved into ludicrous dogma.

In the 1980s, conservatives won by ignoring troubling social problems. Ronald Reagan never promised to end poverty. But as George Bush discovered, the don’t-worry-be-happy approach is no longer viable. Widespread economic anxiety produced an electorate looking for solutions. Boxed in by their anti-tax and anti-government commitments, conservatives end up in the fairy-tale world of cost-free solutions.

This approach is most evident in the areas of fighting poverty and improving education, two traditional liberal arenas that--in another reversal--conservatives have made the heart of their agenda.

Conservatives propose to eliminate poverty through what they call “economic empowerment”--market-oriented programs such as urban enterprise zones and welfare reform. Common sense--and the available empirical evidence--tell us that tax breaks alone are not going to attract businesses into America’s ghettos and barrios. Coupled with a substantial influx of public investment and social services, tax breaks might be part of a solution. Alone, however, they will only move businesses from one poor neighborhood to another--or do nothing at all.

The hottest single issue on the conservative playlist is school choice--the idea of forcing public schools to “compete” for students against each other and private schools. It’s offered as a panacea: Give parents a choice, and schools will flourish. Conservatives love choice because it brings market principles into the belly of the public-sector beast--similar to the appeal that nationalizing the banks used to have for the left.

However, school choice represents a stunning misreading of public sentiment. Parents want good local schools, not the right to ship their kids across the state. On the surface, choice is popular: Everyone favors the abstract “choice” of attending a better school. But there obviously won’t be room for everyone in the good schools. Will some children be forced to attend faraway schools because they drew a low lottery number? Can poor inner-city kids choose wealthy suburban schools? This is the kind of social engineering for which conservatives have long berated liberals. If widely implemented, choice could be the kind of boon for the conservative movement that busing was for liberals.

As with another conservative favorite--testing teachers--the theory is to “punish failure” as the market does. Presumably, that means we will close less-selected schools and fire teachers who don’t pass the tests. All right, then what? Who will teach those children? If people now staffing the system are so inadequate, won’t we have to substantially increase the rewards to attract better people? But more money is not part of the plan.

In fact, conservatives maintain that spending has no connection to education success, often pointing to the lack of correlation between a state’s spending on education and its SAT scores. There are many reasons why their conclusion is unfounded. But the most important is that we should only expect SAT scores to correlate with spending if all schools begin with equal challenges. But we know that the best predictor of a child’s school performance is the parents’ education and financial status, which means children do not begin schooling with equal resources.

Think about it this way: Suppose it was shown, as is certainly the case, that states spending the most on police and prisons also have the highest crime rates. Would conservatives accept the conclusion that such expenditures are irrelevant? Of course not. They would respond, correctly, that those states spend more because they face greater problems. And that is also true of the high-expenditure/low-SAT states, which all have large poor and minority populations.

In fact, the choice debate serves primarily as a sophisticated diversion from the pressing question of financial resources. If limited to the public sector, and used in urban areas, school choice has a contribution to make. But it must be accompanied by a range of other reforms. Some, like involving parents, won’t cost much at all. But others--small class size, computers and increased social services--will.

It turns out that there is indeed--as conservatives used to understand--no free lunch.

Of course, conservatives paint a very different picture of their prospects. To hear them tell it, they’re poised for a comeback. The opposition President began his term weakly. New memberships are pouring into their organizations. The midterm elections look promising.

But conservatives should hesitate before celebrating. After all, we’ve heard this story before--from liberals in 1981 and 1982. As Reagan faltered, liberal groups’ fund-raising and spirits both soared. Then, as now, recovery looked easy: Oppose the President and wait for a return to power.

To be sure, Clinton is losing some fights these days--but they’re his fights. The debate today is over how much to raise taxes on the wealthy, how much to cut defense spending, what form of health care. He will appear to lose some of these fights, but that hardly means conservatives are ascendant. We know what that looks like: The debate is over how much to cut taxes on the wealthy, increase defense spending and so on.

Liberals didn’t return to power until they made important changes. Most critical was the shift from a focus on the distribution of the economic pie to strategies for expanding it--a program of social investment. They came to understand that the middle class was facing economic stress, and would not support renewed efforts to fight poverty until their own security was restored. Liberal values didn’t change, but economic growth was recognized as a political and economic precondition. When the economic downturn came, liberals were ready with a compelling agenda.

To come back, conservatives must rethink their assumptions--as liberals did. Of course, it took liberals a while to learn the right lessons. In fact, a second defeat was required, in 1984, before the rethinking really began. The first instinct was to condemn opponents, hold fast to old programs and await vindication. Such a posture could only forestall a coming-to-terms with new political realities.

The same is true for conservatives today. They have yet to begin a fundamental re-examination of their ideas. They remained trapped in free-market dogma, oblivious to the fact that the country has not judged 12 years of this a success. For conservatives to again shape the agenda, they will first have to shake their addiction to markets.

The first step, as they say, is to admit you have a problem. But for now, at least, conservatives still seem to be in denial.