Neoconservatism: Which Party's Line?

...In short, the ideas of neoconservative policy intellectuals may well be "unavailable" to elected Democrats...

...Amidst all the hullabaloo about the welcome defeat last year of a few Senate liberals, not many people paid much attention to the far more significant changes that have taken place within both houses, whereby liberal Democrats have replaced conservative Democrats in key committee and subcommittee chairmanships...

...And yet for anyone who has paid even passing attention to Democratic Party affairs at the national level, it is difficult to envision the beast as a suitable mount for neocon-servative riders...

...That will change only through either mass conversion of the electorally dominant Democrats, or revitalization of the Republican Party such that it might once again control both Congress and the White House at the same time-a dispensation it has not enjoyed since 1954, and before that since 1930...

...Its leadership generally has had about as much use and respect for intellectuals as for welfare mothers...

...The exhaustion of orthodox liberal thought has become a commonplace...

...one of our most insightful political analysts, Samuel Lubell, said in his great 1951 book, The Future of American Politics, that this is in fact the norm: Our political solar system...has been characterized not by two equally competing suns, but by a sun and a moon...

...Some may even be attracted to the notion that it is also the nation's best hope to survive and flourish as a free society...

...Not only is there precedent for this...

...By contrast, the Democrats are caught in the toils of their own success, and are hardly likely as a party to follow the example of Jerry Brown in casting aside what has after all been a winning formula- ''Borrow and borrow, spend and spend, elect and elect...

...An assault on the federally administered welfare state is no part of neoconservative doctrine...

...It is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period are fought out...

...Except on national security matters, it doesn't...

...So if the academic scribblers of neoconservatism continue to hammer away with anything like their current level of eloquence and rate of production, something may indeed-almost certainly will-turn up in the way of public policy...

...And it is inflation that holds first rank in every opinion poll of citizen concerns...

...Edward Kennedy's replacement of James Eastland as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is only the most visible of the dozens that have occurred practically unnoticed outside Washington...

...Economic development in depressed areas...

...The sort of policies that neoconservative Republicans might advocate would involve incremental changes in the rate of growth of federal expenditures on social programs, coupled with careful dismantling of much of the stifling federal regulatory apparatus...

...And the reason, certainly, is not because he is a hypocrite or a weakling or a turncoat, but because of the imperatives of Democratic electability in states like New York and an increasing number of others...

...for even in times of one-party domination at the national level, the minority party may remain powerful within a number of states and serve as a magnet and training-ground for fresh talent...

...And it highlights a profoundly important truth about political party federalism: Federalism itself is the surest guarantor of a viable two-party system...

...It may look dead but you can never kill it...

...For anyone not yet convinced of the intellectual dominance of neoconservatism today, it will be a helpful exercise to draw up a list of persons in the liberal, non-Marxist camp who compare in academic weight and intellectual stature to Edward Banfield, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Lewis Lapham, Seymour Martin Lipset, Robert Nisbet, Norman Podhoretz, Nelson Polsby, Aaron Wildavsky, and James Q.Wilson...

...Of great importance is the rise in policy influence of the American Enterprise Institute, with its stable of intellectuals and academicians, most of whom have Republican Party leanings...

...The Marxists still maintain some semblance of vitality-Michael Harrington, for one-and a crypto-socialist like Galbraith has finally stopped being crypto, though he has taken to affirming his collectivist vision at a time of declining power and impaired eyesight...

...Few, if any, of his votes on domestic policy * There is some encouraging evidence to the contrary, however...

...Consider as well the example of Senator Daniel Patrick Moyni-han, who has provided neoconservatism with so much of its characteristic tone and eloquence...

...it is an accurate statement of tendency...

...Our concern here is with political process: How, exactly, can neoconservative doctrine have an impact on public policy...

...betray an interest in impeding the growth of the federal government or making it easier for the private sector to grow and flourish...

...That is not an iron law, of course...

...It is surely not unreasonable to expect the rising generation of Republican leaders to identify themselves and their party with neoconservative policies, because that is the way to survive- to survive and flourish...

...Doesn't the secular march of government spending, absolutely and as a relative slice of the gross Karl O'Lessker, senior editor of 'The American Spectator, is professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University...

...It was Dickens' Mr...

...has been routed so thoroughly within the intellectual community that it finds itself confined to a Spectator role in the great unfolding debate [between neoconservatives and the traditional Left...

...A different, more direct kind of answer involves the political parties and the possibility of neoconservative influence on one or both of them...

...The answer, I believe, lies with the saving remnant of the Republican Party, with moderates like Robert Packwood in the Senate and Willis Gradison in the House, and conservatives like Richard Lugar in the Senate and Jack Kemp in the House...

...Micawber who kept expressing his confidence that "something will turn up...

...One kind of answer comes out of a marriage of Charles Dickens and John Maynard Keynes...

...Absent a more impressive turnabout than that, its fortunes are bound to sink even lower...

...How then are those ideas to get into the policy stream...

...Everett Ladd, in his Fortune article of late 1977, was surely not far from the mark when he noted that 'The G.O.P...

...Jobs for the unemployed...

...It is the first of these characteristics that is most immediately relevant to the domestic policy battles that appear to be shaping up for the next few years...

...But there are a couple of highly practical political reasons for thinking that a Republican resurgence based on neoconservative policies may be a live possibility in the near term...

...Probably, too, there would be proposals to modify minimum-wage laws so as to restore some labor-market value to unskilled teenagers, to tinker with the welfare system so as to make it worth people's while to seek employment, and in general to invest the private sector with greater responsibilities and opportunities for seeing to the nation's economic health...

...Today the working and middle classes are growing restive under a burden of inflation and taxation they are unable to see as justified, and the Democrats are incapable of providing them relief -not because the party is wicked, but because it is caught up in a strangulating network of interest-group relationships and doesn't know how to break out...

...But at the same time the great majority of American voters will tolerate no radical assault on the welfare state...

...Rebuilt cities...

...The future of American politics thus seems to lie with a renascence of the badly debilitated junior partner in our two-party system...

...Secondly, by neat dialectical antithesis to what I have just said, the enormous budget deficits of recent years have finally begun to take their toll on public well-being...

...What unites them, what has earned them the common label "neoconservative," is a set of highly prudential approaches to policy that include most particularly a deep skepticism about the ability of big government to accomplish very much of what it sets out to accomplish, a profound suspicion as to the humanitarian and pacific impulses of Soviet Communism, and a healthy respect, almost Burkean in intensity, for tradition and social order...

...and neither Proposition 13 fever nor President Carter's newfound commitment to budget "austerity" holds forth much promise of prying liberal hands away from the levers of power...

...Policy-making remains firmly in the grip of congressional and bureaucratic liberals...

...How does Moynihan's voting record in the Senate differ from that of any other liberal Eastern Democrat...

...None of this may sound very controversial to most audiences, but it is safe to predict that the roars of protest from politically well-muscled groups would be thunderous, perhaps even-literally-riotous...

...Their voices are heard in party councils...

...And what can possibly stimulate that more impressive turnabout other than vital new ideas attractively presented...

...They can be attacked with great effect on the consequence of their most characteristic policies--so long as the attack is not directed at the fundamentals of our American version of the welfare state...

...With utter insouciance Democratic members of Congress each year vote additional billions of dollars at the behest of the great Treasury-raiding interest groups...

...The billions flow out and the votes flow in, and little if anything happens for the benefit of the nominal beneficiaries...

...These are men of intellectual weight and some influence...

...Haven't so many government intrusions been fostered as to incapacitate the private economic system in a number of critical areas...

...And the Republican National Committee itself has recently begun publication of a journal called Commonsense, which looks to be an intellectually respectable forum for the dissemination of, believe it or not, ideas...

...If that should happen, we may yet witness the happiest conjunction of a narrow political and broad national interest since the founding of the Republican Party itself...

...Put simply, in a party system in which one party is consistently, almost unchallengeably stronger than the other, new brains and talent will tend to flow into the stronger party and thus add to its advantage...

...Moreover, the Republican Party has for many years been something less than hospitable to the clash of ideas...

...while the minority party shines in the reflected radiance of the heat thus generated...

...As Governor Reagan doubtless learned in New Hampshire three years ago, proposals to turn over to the states $90 billion worth of social spending, including social security, medicare, and unemployment compensation, amount to an exquisitely calculated formula for snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory...

...And it was Keynes who talked of the hardheaded politicians of one generation being unwitting slaves to the ideas of " academic scribblers" of another...

...Its flavor has been neatly captured by Everett Carll Ladd in the form of a series of rhetorical questions he attributes to leading neoconservative publicists: Hasn't the New Deal state, they ask, been "Balkanized" programmatical-ly, broken into a series of small units each manipulated by a cluster of special interests?...Aren't public bureaucracies, by their very size and insulation, inherently unresponsive to popular wishes...

...When, for example, has anyone read an intellectually respectable, emotionally compelling defense of the liberal welfare state, comparable in quality, say, to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Vital Center, now more than a quarter of a century old...

...and they do so without ever inquiring as to how the bureaucracy intends to go about translating the Congress's good intentions and the taxpayers' money into-what...

...Today, for the first time in his distinguished career, he is an elected official, whose New York constituents are among the most liberal in the nation...

...almost always turns out to be socialist-but the New York Times doesn't seem to know the difference...

...And therefore we should expect none but a brave, skillful, and determined political leadership to bring it off...

...While one may get the impression from reading the New York Times that there is a viable liberal-intellectual alternative, it...

...I have no idea whether they will even try to build, let alone succeed in building, a programmatic base-fashioned out of essentially neoconservative ideas-on which most elected Republicans can stand...

...So the problem, as well as the opportunity, for Republican ascent to the status of viable opposition comes down to that party's ability to formulate coherent policies that are at once clear alternatives to liberal Democratic orthodoxy and supportive of existing institutions...

...No doubt a large minority of the American public, Democrats as well as independents and Republicans, would answer those questions in the affirmative, but that is not the present point, at least not directly...

...Liberal economists may be captivated by such theological constructs as the so-called "full-employment budget,'' but an increasing number of plain citizens are coming round to the view that large deficits contribute largely to inflation...

...They are of proven electability in their own constituencies...

...No one could allege that a Kristol or a Glazer or a Banfield wants to repeal the New Deal...

...It is for this reason that the Republican Party may be in danger of practically ceasing to exist (although it may well be true, as Ronald Reagan's campaign manager, John Sears, has said, that "The Republican Party is like a fungus...

...Given the apparently insurmountable electoral odds, it is tempting to conclude that the great policy battles of the neo-conservatives and liberals over the next decade or so will be fought out, not between parties, but within the majority Democratic Party...

...Even before Irving Kristol and his fellow neo-conservatives were apotheosized on the cover of Esquire magazine recently, students of contemporary political polemics were aware that this new breed of conservative was well on the way toward winning a war of literary and philosophical attrition...

...For even if we accord a fair degree of long-term plausibility to the Dickens-Keynes scenario, we still have to recognize that liberals continue to dominate the policy-making machinery of the federal government...

...Conversely, with the disintegration of previously secure areas for the nationally minority party, that vital form of insurance tends to ebb away...

...That is an impressive but also a very diverse list of intellectual heavyweights...

...national product, expose the United States to the economic disorder known as the "English sickness...

...One is precisely the desperately low state of Republican Party fortunes, as evidenced not only by its disproportionally low numbers of officeholders across the country, but also by its failure to do any better than it did at the polls last November...

...A related point has to do with the dynamics of what Nelson Polsby has called the "one-and-one-half party system," a phenomenon with which Americans have long been familiar at the level of state politics...

...In short, the Democrats are vulnerable at the very heart of their public philosophy and programs...