Big Government’s Proper Calling

In the Aug. 6 issue of the New Republic, columnist Andrew Sullivan praised President Bush and his administration as proper disciples of British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who favored a government that largely presided with restraint and modesty and a state that ran by itself. This greatly pleased the branch of his party whose favorite president is “Silent Cal” Coolidge and that likes a light government touch.

But this ended rudely on Sept. 11, when Bush and his country were suddenly tipped from the quiet world of Coolidge into the desperate one of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which one needs great enterprise to simply keep living. The recent trend toward what Michael Barone has called “Toqueville’s America”--decentralized, diverse and lightly governed--reversed in a minute, overwhelmed by the central direction and national energy needed to win a world war. Some Republicans detest this new order; others enjoy it. This sudden shift in direction inside a Republican administration, headed by a conservative president, is causing schisms within his party and movement, from which none may emerge as the same.

The schism on the right is between people who all are “conservative,” but who come in two different kinds. Those in Type A look back to Barry Goldwater’s race for the presidency in 1964, when they knew in their hearts he was right--right to object to a government that had not yet reached the excesses of Lyndon B. Johnson; right to oppose even the civil rights acts, as too big a power grab by the federal government.

Those in Type B stem from a later migration: neo-cons and other ex-Democrats, hauled across party lines in 1980 by Ronald Reagan, drawn less by his economic ideas than by his willingness to battle the Soviet Union. They admired Democrats such as Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Henry “Scoop” Jackson (Reagan himself admired Roosevelt); in the conservative line, they took their cues from Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, all known for their strong senses of national mission and not properly described as laissez-faire.

Type B conservatives had left the Democrats for various reasons--social issues, isolationism, “permissiveness,” defense--but a visceral aversion to governmental power was not often one of them. They are emotionally at home in the new political world that has emerged since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a world of high stakes and large causes, which makes them natural allies of some kinds of Democrats. And, to a degree not imagined by many, so seems Bush at home in it, too.

This is not to say that these conservatives are up for a new go at Great Society programs. The energies used in a great global war are a delicate blend of the public and the private: The direction comes from elected officials, expressing the will of the people. But the muscle grows out of free enterprise, and experience shows that too much control, too many taxes, too much regulation, makes that muscle tiny and weak. Although public power must always be used in great causes, it ought not to meddle in everyday life. Individuals cannot field armies, defend against anthrax or secure borders. But they can pick schools for their children, invest their funds for their future security and pick health plans in a free market.

Government does well when it maintains a framework in which free men can function, but does poorly when it tries to fine-tune private outcomes, create perfect justice or do too many small things. This is what all conservatives think the Clintons were doing--with their safety rules, smoking regulations and diet guides that came close to De Toqueville’s conception of government hell: “An immense tutelary power

Government tends to have thick, clumsy fingers: It can’t thread a needle, but it can clench a fist. It is clenching one now, with one hell of a vengeance. But it ought to leave needles alone.

All conservatives will stand together against this sort of Clintonesque meddling, but, on other things, new alignments may form. Roosevelt on Dec. 8., 1941, was a different president in a new kind of country facing a different world. To the great distress of the purists within his own party (his wife among them), he ditched the far left as insufficiently martial and became best friends with interventionist captains of industry and with the Henry Stimson Republicans. Like Roosevelt, George W. Bush will do what he must with whomever can help him, understanding, as did Roosevelt, that while arguments on the merits of large and small government are important and useful, it helps to have a country standing in which to conduct them. This isn’t what Coolidge might want for his party. But it isn’t his world anymore.