Changing Course

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

If William F. Buckley, Jr. stood athwart history yelling, “Stop,” David Frum stands astride government saying, “Maybe.” In his new book, “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again” (Doubleday, 224 pages, $24.95), the author proposes a departure from the tradition embodied by Mr. Buckley, suggesting that conservatives should learn to accommodate some moderate expansion of government, including a carbon tax, embrace reform to make American prisons more humane, and at least entertain the possibility of negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, though he also says Republicans must make clear that America will not tolerate an Iranian A-bomb.

In his new book’s introductory chapter, Mr. Frum writes that few problems caused by government “can be fixed by Reagan-style tax cutting and deregulation.” A few pages later, he continues, “There are things only government can do, and if we conservatives wish to be entrusted with the management of the government, we must prove that we care enough about government to manage it well.” In his chapter on America’s competition with China, he surveys the promises the federal government has made to the baby boom generation in Medicare and Social Security and concludes, “the days of broad, across-the-board, middle-class tax cutting are over.”

While it’s true that modern conservatives have always allowed for more government than their libertarian cousins, it has been the perennial struggle against creeping socialism that has defined them, working to shrink the government to its basics by starving it of tax revenue. With “Comeback,” Mr. Frum is proposing that conservatives reconsider those priorities, and close readers of the author will not be surprised. In his essential “Dead Right,” Mr. Frum exposed the Reagan presidency for expanding government the Reagan revolution was supposed to shrink. The red pen of President Bush, for whom Mr. Frum wrote speeches until 2003, has been as rare as Reagan’s. President Bush has presided over the swelling of Medicare, the imposition of new federal education standards, and a doubling of the secret intelligence bureaucracy that so failed the nation before the attacks of September 11, 2001. This says nothing of creating a Department of Homeland Security. But Mr. Frum’s differences with Mr. Buckley extend beyond his attitude toward the size of government. In the 1950s, National Review conservatives, led by Mr. Buckley, relished their dissident status. To them, it did not matter for decades that most Americans didn’t seem to care much if Washington imposed price controls or subsidized farm commodities. To be a National Review conservative was to be out of the mainstream. The critique of the welfare state would be vindicated only after enough Americans converted.

Mr. Frum is more concerned with the demands of the American public as they are today. He musters surveys and voter trends to make the case that Americans may never convert to genuine National Review conservatism. As a result, he argues, conservatives must develop a politics that addresses the aspirations and worries of the electorate, not the philosophical cohesion of a movement to maximize personal liberty.

If halting socialism is not the primary job of conservatives and the Republican Party, then what is? Mr. Frum says it should be “American democratic nationhood.” He writes that throughout the history of the Republican Party, it has always stood for a national unity above all things. Hence conservatives must figure out ways to make the government of all Americans work better.

As a result, when he turns to policy questions, Mr. Frum proposes technical fixes, rather than sweeping critiques. He wants to reform the alternative minimum tax so that middle-class families are immune to a tax designed for the super rich. He seeks to deregulate the state health insurance market to allow workers in New Jersey to purchase insurance policies in Kentucky. He embraces South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s idea of tuition tax credits for families earning less than $75,000 per year. As a matter of decency, he argues that the party of law and order must make sure that prisons are at least humane. In foreign policy, Mr. Frum proposes that the next president pursue what he calls “second best” outcomes in Iraq. That means abandoning for now talk of making Iraq a modern democracy and encouraging a kind of federalism that simultaneously gives the Kurds a maximum autonomy and strikes a deal with a weakened federal government for a long-term American presence in the country. Over time, the country may not approximate Belgium, but it will be a more stable alternative to the forces of Iran and al Qaeda.

More important, Mr. Frum says the next president must strengthen the alliance with India, despite America’s investment in a stable Pakistan. He wants more military training with India’s army and a greater recognition that the world’s largest democracy suffers from the same Islamic terror that the rest of us do.

The most provocative portion of the book is his discussion of a carbon tax. Mr. Frum does not purchase the apocalyptic warnings of the tax’s chief proponent, Al Gore. But he acknowledges that one can worry about the environmental costs of carbon pollution without predicting it will result in the flooding of our coastal cities. He also makes the important argument that America’s reliance on fossil fuel enriches the worst regimes on the planet.

Instead of asking the Department of Energy to play venture capitalist with alternative fuel technologies, however, Mr. Frum says this should be left to the market. “For government to decree one solution or another will almost certainly end in waste and disappointment. A higher gasoline price — combined with the abolition of all other subsidies — will clear the way for market competition to settle the issue,” he writes.

Lest anyone think Mr. Frum is trying to win grudging respect from the NPR set, Democrats and the special interests they represent come in for withering critique in this book. In his second chapter, Mr. Frum sketches this thumbnail of the other major party.

“Democrats, by contrast, have historically tended to attract those who felt themselves in some way marginal to the American experience: slaveholders, indebted farmers, immigrants, intellectuals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, feminists, gays — people who identify with the ‘pluribus’ in the nation’s motto, ‘e pluribus unum.’ As the nation weakens, Democrats grow stronger,” he writes.

Nonetheless, Mr. Frum reserves his harshest critiques for his own tribe. In his conclusion, he derides the conservative movement for turning into a gaggle of sniping radio talkers who fail to persuade anyone who doesn’t already believe. “We conservatives have neglected the ideas business for too long,” he writes. “A new generation hungers for answers and solutions, and too often they hear only polemics, wisecracks, accusations, and talking points.”

The next generation of intellectuals Mr. Frum calls to arms must, however, grapple with the legacy of the giants on whose shoulders it stands. For Mr. Frum is asking them not to pick up where Mr. Buckley left off, but to leave his mission unfinished.

elake@nysun.com


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