Ideal Government

...Wilberforce led a successful crusade to end the British slave trade...

...I know a few libertarians, and none of them are indifferent to poverty...

...White House offi cials, including the president, occasionally insinuated that opponents of the administration’s efforts to extend amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens without doing much to stop the infl ow of illegal labor were xenophobes and nativists...

...In Heroic Conservatism, Gerson specifi cally targets “libertarian indifference to the poor...

...The necessity of “compassionate conservatism” presupposes that there is a non-compassionate conservatism—and if the words have any meaning, non-compassionate conservatives, rather than simply holding views on public policy with which Gerson and Bush disagree, lack virtue...

...Yet heroic conservatism, he writes, also has a tradition behind it...

...Some may blanch at Gerson’s politics, thinking him overly pious and self-righteous...

...These people are called liberals...

...There are reasons other than heart-tugging anecdotes and appeals to personal virtue to support parts of Gerson’s program...

...Moreover, his account goes out of its way to confi rm the fears of earlier writers who have attacked the president for being an “imposter” conservative...

...Such an allergy to meaningful debate weakens one’s persuasive abilities...

...This same tendency was present during the debate over immigration reform...

...As Gerson writes, “It is fair to ask: In what sense is this approach of mine conservative...

...And it is worth studying his approach, since its most prominent adherent, according to Gerson, is George W. Bush himself...

...Gerson does not like these people...

...Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way...

...It is a good question...

...Such a problem—“so clearly rooted in governmentally enforced oppression”— requires an “active response by government...

...Nor does Gerson hold his fi re on those “conservative critics” who enjoy the “severe pleasure of cutting food stamps,” who seek “steep reductions in foreign assistance,” and who wanted to pay “the costs of Katrina” by “postponing or ending the Medicare prescription-drug benefi t.” He blames the “weak, uncreative policy” of the now-forgotten 2004 State of the Union address on “budget concerns” caused by the “internal triumph of conventional Republican thinking...

...Today’s “idealism,” Gerson writes, is the 21st-century version of Wilberforce’s religiously based moralism...

...Gerson calls his approach “idealism,” which he contrasts with the “noble pessimism” of “traditional conservatism...

...Because every issue is personalized, none can be debated impartially...

...But he saves his real ire for those conservatives, if they exist, who do not hold the “radical belief in the rights of every individual” and a “conviction” that government “must act”—“when appropriate”— to “secure those rights when they are assaulted by oppression, poverty, and disease...

...This is the legacy of “religiously motivated reform...

...Democrats emerge from Heroic Conservatism relatively unscathed...

...Some on the right seek to replace idealism abroad with “realist” policies which are “deeply skeptical” that “other countries can sustain democracy...

...he found them “frustratingly restrictive...

...Furthermore, idealism itself is endangered...

...he is also right to argue that the politics of such movements are, more often than not, necessary, humane, reasoned, and just contributions to democratic debate in a constitutional republic...

...Gerson’s political hero is William Wilberforce, the “witty, eloquent, conservative member of parliament” in the early 19th century whose “Christian faith led to a moral revulsion at slavery so intense and physical” that it “nearly destroyed his health...

...Such a book is probably being written now, in fact...

...Others want to “get back” to what they see as the “real business” of conservatism: “cutting government...

...He says only that President Bush “knew that Americans did not seek or desire to undo the Great Society...

...He saw their governing vision at work “in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” when the “administration found men and women who had never had a bank account...

...The problem with Gerson’s approach is that he routinely confuses prudential policy questions with matters of personal character...

...And that’s not all Gerson’s right about: There really are cynics in our public life, folks who argue that only certain states and peoples are “ready” for democracy (often the same folks who sing the virtues of “guided democracy” or “soft authoritarianism”), who belittle the Bush administration’s declaration of war on terror as an “overreaction” to the September 11, 2001, attacks, and who disguise cheap partisanship as “reason,” “science,” or “realitybased” public policy...

...Idealism is not the “ideology of minimal government,” nor is it the “rigid secularization” that endangers “one of the main sources of social justice in American history,” religious faith...

...Elsewhere, Gerson writes handy expositions of Catholic social doctrine—ideas like subsidiarity and solidarity—which give us insight into Bush’s domestic policy, and provide a reasonable basis for allowing religion some space in our public life...

...It limits the scope of one’s arguments...

...The marshaling of government resources to combat social ills is a pretty good description of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and there is a substantial historical record measuring its results, for better or worse...

...Gerson contrasts “traditional conservatism” with his own “heroic conservatism...

...But they would be wrong to do so...

...And because the root of all disagreement— and thus the root of all politics—is the other side’s character fl aws, rhetoric is quickly reduced to name-calling...

...This tendency began early, back in 1999, when Gerson helped Bush defi ne the latter’s philosophy of “compassionate conservatism...

...He rejects the idea that the Bush administration’s budgets were excessively large...

...Because the “idealist” or “compassionate conservative” believes he occupies the moral high ground, all counterarguments are beneath him...

...Thinking so does not make them unvirtuous people, and it doesn’t strengthen public debate to suggest as much...

...The second, “idealism at home,” involves a “determination to care for the weak and vulnerable” while healing “racial divisions” by the “expansion of opportunity...

...Support for the president’s African AIDS policy, Gerson wrote, is an “expression of compassion and empathy” evincing a “serious conception of America’s role in the world...

...The fi rst, “idealism abroad,” concerns the “promotion of liberty and hope” as “alternatives to hatred and bitterness...

...I can’t wait to read it...

...Say otherwise, and you’ll fi nd your motivations attacked, just like Fred Thompson...

...Gerson’s idealism has two parts...

...The strongest sections of Heroic Conservatism are his detailed, plainly written, step-by-step explications of the Bush Doctrine and the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein...

...One day there will be a defense of a “compassionate” or “strong-government” conservatism that will articulate its public-policy rationale without calling its opponents small-minded, cruel, extremist, indifferent, or shallow...

...But this is a caricature...

...Not least, he suggested that Thompson lacked “moral seriousness...

...Along the way, Gerson also reveals the novel ideological character of Bush’s presidency, as well as the limits of his approach to governing...

...But there is a more recent antecedent to heroic conservatism...

...But not the large majority, which was perfectly willing to debate the administration on policy, rather than personal, grounds...

...More recently, when presidential candidate Fred Thompson told a questioner (who wanted to know whether he supported the president’s African AIDS initiative) that “the government has its role” in fi ghting disease but we also “need to keep fi rmly in mind” the “role of us as individuals and Christians,” Gerson went ballistic...

...End of discussion...

...Currently there is a “backlash” against it...

...2005—that somehow an emphasis on individual responsibility rather than government dependency causes human suffering—you are right...

...If all this sounds to you remarkably like Democratic talking points circa Matthew Continetti, associate editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine...

...In a Washington Post column he accused Thompson of picking on the “most vulnerable people on the planet,” of “playing to isolationist sentiments,” of possessing “shallow” theological knowledge, and of refl ecting an “anti-government extremism...

...It is an apology for the administration that unapologetically defends the administration’s most unconservative aspects...

...Similarly, President Bush, with Gerson at his side, has led crusades to end tyranny, poverty, and disease...

...But Gerson does not examine this record...

...Call me an idealist...

...For Gerson is not only correct when he points out the long history of spiritually inspired reform movements...

...True, Gerson criticizes their party’s abortion policies, its secularism, its view that “ethical relativism is the only answer to moral arrogance,” and its lack of serious ideas about how to confront the nightmarish “combination of Islamic radicalism and proliferation...

...No doubt some of those opponents were exactly that...

...They just think economic growth and self-reliance are more effective than the federal government at lifting families out of destitution...

...BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI This well written and engaging memoir from former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson offers a strong defense of administration policies and a you-are-there perspective on some of the most important decisions and utterances made by President Bush in his fi rst six years in offi ce...