conservative populism

The nomination of Sarah Palin and the subsequent division within the self-described conservative movement over her qualifications provided one of the most interesting and entertaining sidebars to the last presidential election. The differences between so-called mainstream conservatives around the country who rallied around her nomination and supported her more fervently than they supported Mr. McCain and the haughty disdain of soi-disant conservative talking heads like David Frum and David Brooks made overt what was an inchoate fact about the Republican Party and the conservative movement itself: populism is now central both to the self-conception and to the electoral success of conservatives and Republicans.

The immediate question that arose in my mind was, ‘how did the populists, who originally were identified with the anti-elite political left in the US, come to identify themselves as conservative Republicans, and why do they strike fear into the hearts of the Frum/Brooks wing of the Republican Party?’ The second part of the question is, of course, easy to answer. Frum/Brooksers went to Ivy League-type schools with liberals; they married Ivy League-educated liberals; they go to cocktail parties with them; their children play with them, etc. The Frum/Brooksers are a part of the American pseudo-educated class and would rather not be associated with the hoi polloi. (Frum is not only pseudo-educated, he’s pseudo-American. He’s a smug, self-satisfied Canadian who knows just enough to sound foolish about every subject he touches.)

The first question, however, is a great deal more interesting, but the answers on offer are unsatisfactory. There are, of course, the silly quasi-Marxist maunderings of Thomas Frank, who manages to be both condescending and cornpone at the same time, and there are the usual rantings about the conservative appeal to the innate racism, sexism, or generic wickedness of the lower and middle classes. But these answers say more about the authors than about the populist movement, and, in any case, these folks are closer to the Frum/Brooksers than to the people they want to vilify anyway.

I want to suggest something quite different, which might explain not only why many traditionalist conservatives are uncomfortable with populism, but also why populists are now uncomfortable with the American welfare-liberalism. First, conservatism historically has been quite suspicious of ‘the people’, a phrase which brings to mind barricades and mob rule. John Lukacs, among others, has made a career out of pointing out the incoherencies of populist conservatism, with the primary one being that conservatives have traditionally maintained that political life is a practice which takes years to master and, thus, should be left to the connoisseur. Experience here is central, and it cannot be gained by merely reading a book or two. In fact it may take a generation or two of practical participation to master the art of politics (just as it might take as long to master the art of carpentry or dancing or academic life).

This old type of elitism, which informed the conservatism of the British Conservative Party in the 19th century, has faded away and it has been replaced by a new technocratic elitism based upon several ill-founded epistemological notions and some vague claims about meritocracy. The technocrats presuppose that all knowledge can be reduced to a set of communicable rule-like propositions, and that, upon learning these propositions well (let’s say, for example, at a Ivy League-type university), any one ought to be able to engage in the activity learned (thus, the success of how-to books on everything from bridge and cooking to politics and art).

The early populists were opposed to the kind of elitism of taste and connoisseurship exemplified by the British Conservative Party and by the early American Federalists, the Whigs, and the Randolph/Calhoun portions of the old Democratic Party. The Civil War in America destroyed the old elite and replaced it with the new technocratic elite, at least in the Republican Party (see OW Holmes for exhibit one). Remember, most of the early Progressives were Republicans. However, after the wholesale appropriation of technocracy by the Democratic Party during the Depression, Progressivism became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratics, and the populists, who now opposed the technocratic elitism of the Progressives, became fractured. Since the Democratic Party now believes wholly in the rule of a technocratic elite, the populists have moved to the Republican Party, where they found a comfortable home for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, most of the prominent players in both the contemporary conservative movement and most powerful Republicans are just as much committed to rule by technocrat as the most Panglossian Democrat, so when populism really rears its head, the Frum/Brooksers retreat to their pseudo-educated compatriots (technocracy offers vocational training not liberal education, which is why the American political class is now and has been for the past century almost completely uneducated).

I must admit that populism makes me cringe, as well. However, contrary to reports in the mainstream media, its anti-intellectualism is shared by both the political class and the commentariat here. Tocqueville noted the American impatience with anything other than vocational education almost two centuries ago, and, if anything, the situation has worsened. The old teachers’ colleges, cow colleges, and vocational institutions have not become places where one can receive an authentic liberal education. Instead, the liberal arts colleges and large state universities have vocationalized themselves. The primary difference between the Palins and the Frum/Brooksers is the price of their vocational training, and, in this equation, the Palins of the world actually get a better bargain.