Lately, we’ve heard a lot about how conservatives are allegedly "out of ideas." Lack of ideas is supposedly the reason conservatives have recently been losing a slew of elections and scoring low ratings in public opinion polls, and why George Bush is the most hated president since the final days of Richard Nixon. What conservatives need, say some, are "new ideas." That’s the ticket! Then their fortunes, currently in such spectacular free fall, will rally once again and stage a dramatic comeback.

I confess that talk of ideas in the context of American electoral politics long puzzled me. What on earth are these idée fixe-ated pundits talking about? Surely they don’t mean ideas in the philosophical sense. American political discourse in no way resembles the Oxford Union debating society, let alone Plato’s Republic.

Then I finally got it. By "ideas," by and large the pundits seem to mean a boutique-y marketing of a political agenda to the policy-making elites. As the historian David Greenberg once wrote, the main task of the Heritage Foundation (and I would argue, of other think tanks as well) is to "flood politicians and editorialists with ready-made policies and easy-to-digest talking points." Many political "ideas" amount to changing the packaging, but not the basic product. Old wine in new bottles and all that. Because I don’t believe there really are any big "new ideas" in politics. It’s just the same old ideas dressed up in a fancy new set of clothes.

For example, an old idea that conservatives have is that markets pretty much always work better than the public sector. So they thought up school vouchers as a way to strengthen the private school system and weaken the public school system. They don’t like government programs, so they’ve been trying, for years now, to privatize Social Security. They don’t like progressive taxation, so they’ve advocated a flat tax. And on and on.

Conservative "ideas" tend to amount to policies that transfer resources out of the public sector and into private hands. On the other side of the coin, liberal "ideas" do the reverse: they take money out of private hands and put it into the public sector, for the purpose of helping the less advantaged or solving social problems. Often, liberal "new ideas" take the form of new government programs. For example, several years ago when Tim Russert asked Rahm Emanuel what the Democrats’ "new ideas" were, Emanuel mentioned enacting universal health care, significantly increasing subsidies so that more people can attend college, and creating a national institute for science and technology research.

The distribution of money and power in our society is basically what liberals and conservatives fight over. Liberals tend to want the money and power to be more equally shared, while conservatives want it to be concentrated in the hands of the corporations and the rich. But it’s considered rude to speak publicly of things so vulgar as money and power, so when attempting to persuade elites, both sides find it helpful to talk about "ideas." That makes these things a lot more comfortable for all concerned — we can all pretend that we’re have a high-minded debate about ideals, instead of a grubby, down-and-dirty fight about power.

Greenberg noted that "In American politics, liberalism and radicalism have been the preferred ideologies of the intellectuals." With the glut of liberal intellectuals around, coming up with "ideas" — new programs and policies — has not been much of a problem for the left. Those ideas may not have been fashionable, and some of them — like universal health care, for example — are very, very old. But "ideas" have always been there.

Conservatives have had more of a challenge along these lines. For one thing, once upon a time there were very few conservative American intellectuals. As Greenberg points out, "So insignificant was conservatism a half-century ago that Lionel
Trilling could claim there were no true conservative ideas in our
culture, only ‘irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble
ideas.”’ But it’s not only that conservatives tend to attract fewer eggheads to their cause; while it’s easy to frame a new government program as an idea, it’s much harder to make dismantling such a program sound like an idea.

Half a century ago, at the dawn of the conservative movement, conservatives faced another, even deeper problem: their political aims were viewed with distaste by many of the elites — policymakers, middle- and high-brow journalists — that they were trying to appeal to. Racism and class warfare have an ugly edge to them, after all. So it was all the more important that conservatives come up with some high-minded "ideas" to sanitize their more controversial and unsavory goals.

In this respect, Milton Friedman was God’s gift to the conservative movement. Friedman was a great economist and a world-class intellectual who, like the conservatives, believed in a radically deregulated state and in free markets as the best (or least bad) solution to virtually every social or political problem. Better yet, his ideology implied that screwing over the working class was not only the most economically efficient way to run our society, but conformed to the highest ideals of cosmic justice.      

Eureka! in Friedman-style economics, conservatives had at last found their "ideas." Friedman-omics provided the figleaf of intellectual respectability which covered the moral depravity of much of their politics. Friedmanesque ideologues began to prevail in economics departments across the country, so many of the policy elites the conservatives sought to influence were already thoroughly schooled in the "magic of the market." Economics-based appeals flattered the elites by making them feel smart, and also by implying that their worldly success was entirely deserved, earned by the dint of their hard work and "human capital," and not by the luck of the draw of what class they happened to be born into.

No doubt that, once conservatives captured the policymakers and the elite opinion-making journals like The New Republic, it became much easier to get their policies enacted. Why, all the right-thinking people were united in their belief that dismantling the welfare state was the way to go; it was so uncool, so déclassé, so retro to believe otherwise. Only those dirty fucking hippies at The Nation would disagree.

It’s a mistake, though, to believe that conservatives, or liberals, win elections because of "ideas." I’ve long believed that the power of "ideas" in politics to be way overrated. Jonathan Chait once made this point in an interesting New Republic piece, but even now, a year or so after their web redesign, TNR’s archives are still fucked up, so regrettably I can’t link to it. But the point is, politics has a two-track strategy: populist messages for the masses, and "ideas" for the elites. "Ideas" are crafted so as to win the political allegiance of the policymaking classes. But populism is what wins elections.

The right and left have different populist strategies; liberals use economic populism, while the conservative tack tends to be cultural populism. The liberal platform often amounts to "we’re going to give you stuff." That message has an obvious intuitive appeal; as a populist politician whose name escapes me once said, "Nobody shoots Santa Claus." During and long after the New Deal, the Santa Claus strategy was a really tough one to beat. Red-baiting was sometimes effective; not only did it enable conservatives to smear liberals as totalitarian extremists, but it also appealed to nationalist concerns about protecting America from the perceived threats of communist countries overseas.

However, the red-baiting was only intermittently successful. Then Richard Nixon discovered the politics of cultural grievance, and bingo! — the right had hit on a winning theme at last. Ever since, conservatives have run on the platform that "we’re going to stick it to the hippies/the snobby latte-drinking liberals/the uppity Negroes/the bitchez who don’t know their place/the gays who are trying to recruit your children into their ‘lifestyle’," etc. George Will recently claimed that it was "ideas" that powered "conservatism’s remarkably idea-driven ascendancy," but that is a steaming load of self-serving horseshit. Unless you count the Southern strategy as an idea.

Now that conservatives are in deep doo-doo, it’s fashionable in some quarters to blame their current miserable state on their "lack of ideas." Strangely enough, up until recently it was supposed to be liberals
who were "out of ideas." And though I don’t know of any world-historic
ideas that liberals have invented recently, I don’t hear them being criticized for that much anymore. But that’s because whichever party is unpopular gets accused of having "no new ideas." However, the truth is, each party has plenty of "ideas," if by ideas you mean policy proposals. It just that, at certain political moments, their ideas may be unpopular or have little traction politically.

Indeed, the lack of ideas has little to do with conservatism’s failure. Conservatives are increasingly unpopular because they have run this country into the ground. As the conservative writer P.J. O’Rourke once said, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it." Moreover, the old politics of cultural grievance is not working so well anymore. Even in a solid Republican Congressional district in deepest Mississippi, a barrage of negative ads featuring Reverend Wright didn’t work, and a Democrat won a special election by a comfortable margin.

Part of the reason why cultural populism doesn’t have the same salience it used to is because, with the recession, the mortgage crisis, and gas prices going through the roof, economic concerns have moved to the fore. But it’s also because Republicans have been milking the same tired politics of cultural grievance for 40 years now, and Americans are finally catching on that it’s empty, manipulative bullshit. Also, Woodstock was a lifetime ago, and people are no longer so freaked out by the idea that women and African-Americans deserve equal status in our society. Even gay marriage is gaining popularity. The Archie Bunkers are dying out and being replaced by a more tolerant younger generation. So that "silent majority" shit is just so played out these days.

Which is not to say that conservatism is dead. But right now it’s in a decadent phase and has exhausted itself, and we’re entering a liberal era. However, conservatism will be back, in one form or another. Liberals will reign for a while, but one day they, like today’s conservatives, will become complacent. They’ll make mistakes. Voters will decide the liberals have "gone too far" and will kick them out. This is the cycle of history, and it’s the way the eternal war of the moneyed elites vs. the masses tends to play itself out. Reports of the death of history are, indeed, greatly exaggerated. Though the war between conservatives and liberals will never end, I like to believe, probably naively, that history moves along an upward spiral, and that  over time, some progress occurs which can’t be wiped out, the best efforts of the conservatives to the contrary.

Ideas, though, are not what motivates political change. What does is people’s sense of which party does a better job of looking out for their interests. Since, for most people, liberals have the advantage on the economic front, conservatives will probably continue to focus on cultural and nationalist appeals. And both sides will continue to rely on "ideas" as a means of winning over the intellectuals, journalists, and policymakers. But their success or failure politically ultimately will have little to do with "ideas."

First off, many thanks to Matt for asking me to guest blog. Matt has long been one of my role models as a blogger and I’m honored that he invited me here. If you want to read more of my stuff, you can visit my own blog, The G Spot.

Now on to my first post here, which I warn you will be looonnnggg.

A number of people I greatly respect have been touting Virginia senator James Webb as Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick. Indeed, more than a few of my liberal male friends seem positively smitten with the man.

But I say, enough with the mancrushes already! It’s true that Webb, a Vietnam vet who’s been decorated with with two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, the
Silver Star and the Navy Cross, is undeniably butch. But there are a number of reasons why he would be a terrible vice presidential pick.

Back in February, Ezra Klein made the case against Webb, and the reasons Ezra gave then still hold. For one thing, if President Obama wants to get anything done, he’ll need a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. It would not be wise for him to choose a red state senator, because who knows if another Democrat could be elected to that seat? Also, as Ezra argued, the things that make Webb valuable as a "gadfly senator," such as his "brashness" and his "willingness to push the conversation forward," would be a bad match for the vice presidency, which would require him to "constantly watch his mouth" and not say anything that conflicts with the president’s agenda.

All that is true,  but the reasons why Webb would be a poor choice go way beyond that. Even Alex Massie, who strongly supports Webb for veep, has admitted that the man is "hopeless on the campaign trail":

You could see that it
pained him to even ask people to vote for him and he plainly had little
patience for the self-abasement and daily humiliations of life on the
campaign trail. He is not a natural baby-kisser. My sense – from his
own writing and what I’ve read about him – is that he is also
difficult, stubborn, awkward, cussed and not to be trifled with. these
too may not be attributes best-suited to a national campaign in the
modern political era.

Doesn’t sound too promising, does it? But that is actually the least of my worries about Webb. No, what I worry about is the fact that Webb basically became a Democrat the day before yesterday, and he has a long history of holding some pretty wingnutty opinions and making some fairly outrageous and offensive statements. To quote a Rolling Stone profile of the man, just a few years ago he was saying that "Liberals were ‘cultural Marxists,’ and ‘the upper crust of academia and the
pampered salons of Hollywood’ were a fifth column waging war on
American traditions."

In 2000, Webb opined that affirmative action was "state-sponsored racism"; that same year he endorsed the ultra-conservative Republican George Allen for the senate. In 2004, Webb wrote an op-ed for USA Today arguing that John Kerry "deserved condemnation" for his opposition to the Vietnam War (to be fair, in the op-ed Webb is also critical of George Bush; but then again, in the same piece Webb also takes a swipe at the "liberal media"). Troublingly, he gave this glowing endorsement to Mark Moyar’s uber-wingnutty "revisionist" history of the Vietnam War, Triumph Forsaken, which was published in October 2006:

I know of no scholar more dedicated to bringing a thorough and accurate portrayal of America’s involvement in Vietnam than Mark Moyar. Everyone who is interested in a full picture of that oft misunderstood war should be grateful for his effort.

But as Rick Perlstein has demonstrated in a devastating review, the Moyar book is dreadful piece of far-right propaganda posing as history. What it basically is, is a book-length elaboration of the "stab-in-the-back" myth: i.e., Moyar argues that the Vietnam War was winnable, and that only the treachery of liberal elites in the media and the government prevented America from achieving "victory."

Am I the only person who finds it deeply disturbing that any elected Democratic official would give an unqualified endorsement to a book like this? Let alone someone who has received such adoring coverage from so many liberal (male) journalists, and is being touted for vice president. And remember, the Moyar book is not a distant relic, either — it was published less than two years ago, at around the same time when Webb was running for senate.

I think I’ve given more than enough very good reasons why Jim Webb should not be Barack Obama’s running mate. But there is yet one more reason to oppose his elevation to vice president, and it’s the one that I consider to be the most important one of all: his truly horrible record on women’s issues.

In 1979, in an infamous article in The Washingtonian magazine called "Women Can’t Fight," Webb argued that women were biologically unsuited to combat and didn’t belong in the military academies. He said that the mere presence of women was "poisoning" the environment for male cadets. He also

declared that no senior female in a leadership position at the academy won her rank by merit, thereby impugning the accomplishments of every female midshipman and throwing fuel on the smoldering resentments of a vocal minority of disgruntled midshipmen.

Webb’s writings on women did a hell of a lot of damage. It gave invaluable ammunition to the enemies of women’s presence in the military and helped stall and perhaps even roll back women’s progress there. Kathleen Murray, a 1984 academy graduate who went on to become a commander in the Navy, said of Webb’s screed: "This article was brandished repeatedly. [Men] quoted and used it as an
excuse to mistreat us." Her observation is confirmed by this post, which contains devastating testimony by women in the military about the effect Webb’s writings had. For instance, here is what Commander Jennifer Brooks, USN(retired) had to say:

I was 19 years old and in my second year at the Academy when the
Webb article came out. I was devastated to be told by a war hero that
the Academy should be shut down rather than accept me, and that my very
presence was responsible for the degradation of the military. As a best
selling author, James Webb knew the power of words, and to describe the
Naval Academy as ‘a horny woman’s dream’ was inexcusable. My mother
read that.

I joined the Navy to serve my country. It was unbelievably
demoralizing to be painted as a pampered slut who was taking up
classroom space and pre-destined to endanger the lives of the brave
young men around her.

You may say, well, that was way back in the 80s and late 70s. He’s changed since then, right? But that is not exactly clear. At a 1991 convention of naval aviators called Tailhook, 83 women were reported to have been sexually harassed or assaulted by military personnel. From the beginning, Webb’s concern for the victims was merely perfunctory. But he gave many speeches and wrote many articles vociferously defending the accused. In a 1992 article in the New York Times, he called the investigation of Tailhook a "witch hunt." In a 1997 article he wrote for the conservative Weekly Standard, he was highly critical of what he termed "ever-expanding sexual mixing" in the military and he referred to feminist efforts to improve the status of women in the military as merely "salving the egos of a group of never-satisfied social engineers."

And yes, once again he brought up Tailhook, and once again he showed himself more concerned with attacking feminists than with securing justice for the victims: "Events such as the 1991 Tailhook debacle have been seized upon and used by feminists to attack the military culture and bring about major concessions." Indeed, as late as the time this book was published (2004), Webb, according to the author, "persists in refusing to blame the Navy and Marine Corps officers who participated in the abuses of Tailhook, who failed to raise a hand to stop them and stonewalled the investigation that followed."

To be fair, Webb, who is pro-choice, has kinda sorta apologized for his past writings and statements on women in the military. He termed the infamous Washingtonian  article an "overreach." Um, that’s putting it mildly.

Look, I accept that on some issues red state Democrats are going to be more conservative than I would like. And there are some things I like about Webb — he’s made valuable contributions on issues like Iraq, veterans’ benefits, prisons, and  economic inequality. If I lived in Virginia, I’d vote for him. But Webb also has a history of colossally bad judgment on many issues, especially gender issues. (And — hello! — he has huge paper trail documenting all of his bad judgments and ideological flip-flops. Can you imagine the fun the Republicans would have with that? Every other minute Webb would be "clarifying" or "explaining" or "apologizing for" some thing  he’d written or said long ago. Just his presence on the ticket would throw the Obama campaign seriously off-message).

Above all, though, I am very troubled by the idea that a man who has held such sexists views, and has done so much to damage the cause of
gender equality in the military, would be one heartbeat away from the presidency. I do not think Webb is at all trustworthy on women’s issues, and women’s issues are very important to me and to millions of others besides. I think it’s essential that any Democratic president or vice president have a good record on women’s, civil rights, and labor issues. It’s not just that women, African-Americans, and unions are the core constituencies of the Democratic party. It’s that advancing the causes of racial, gender, and economic equality are the among the most important moral and political issues of our time. These are core values to me and millions of other Democrats, and elevating a man who has been so awful on one of them to the second most powerful position in the party is completely unacceptable.

Stepping away from all that high-minded rhetoric, I’ll add that, in practical terms, selecting Webb would be a slap in the
face to the Hillary Clinton supporters. I’m not saying that Obama has to pick
Hillary as veep (and indeed, I think that would be a bad idea). I’m not
even saying that he needs to pick a woman.

But Hillary was the first woman to ever have a serious shot at the
presidency, and she came so close. So the Hillary supporters (of whom,
to be clear, I am not one) will feel frustrated enough that their
candidate didn’t win. But for Obama to choose — out of all the
well-qualified candidates out there — the one person who has a really awful record on gender issues would be like rubbing salt in the
wound. It would be seen as a big "screw you" to Hillary’s supporters
and to feminists in general.

How would Obama supporters feel if their man lost a closely
contested fight, and then Hillary turned around and picked as veep
someone who, into the 1990s, was an outspoken critic of
civil rights? It would seem tone-deaf and incredibly insensitive, to
say the least.

In addition, I just don’t buy many of the pro-Webb arguments. One argument I hear is that Webb would be great because Obama needs "credibility" on foreign policy. But as Mori Dinauer has pointed out, this may "just underscore the notion that Obama is somehow weak on foreign policy."

Then there’s the notion that selecting Webb will buy Obama some white working class cred. I have multiple problems with this one. First of all, the notion, which some lefty males of my acquaintance really seem to buy into, that Webb is some pure tribune of salt-of-the-earth working class authenticity is highly questionable. Webb’s father was a career Air Force officer; his family was not wealthy but certainly was comfortably middle class.

Secondly, the idea that putting a white Southern military dude on the ticket will somehow win Obama white working class votes he wouldn’t get otherwise is highly problematic. It reminds me of the way I and my fellow liberals thought that nominating John Kerry might win over the working class, ’cause they love military heroes, right?  Besides, the idea that Webb would attract white working class support is not well-supported. In 2006, Webb barely eeked out a victory against George Allen, a deeply damaged candidate. And it was Allen, not Webb, who overwhelmingly won both the white vote (especially the white male vote) and the votes of the non-college educated. There is no evidence that Webb is especially popular with white working class voters.

Finally, as Josh Patashnik has noted, there is little evidence that vice presidential candidates affect election outcomes. People tend to vote based on the top of the ticket, period. As someone else (I can’t remember who) said, Barack Obama’s running mate could be a sixpack of beer and it still wouldn’t bring him any white working class votes that he wouldn’t get otherwise. If he wants to win more white working class support, Obama’s best bet is to give more emphasis to bread-and-butter economic issues. The good news is that Obama doesn’t have to do especially well with the white working class vote. Pollster Ruy Texeira believes that Obama can lose the white working class vote by 10 to 12 points and still win the election.

Given Webb’s shaky  campaigning skills, his well-documented history of extremely poor political judgments, his johnny-come-lately status as a Democrat, his questionable ability to attract votes, and above all, his horrible record on gender, I do not think James Webb would be a wise choice for vice president. It’s interesting to me that, though I don’t know of a single woman who thinks Webb should be Obama’s running mate, I know many men who positively swoon over the man.

To the legions of Webb fanboys on the left, I’ll say this: dudez, this race is not about your illusions about how an Obama-Webb ticket could somehow miraculously heal centuries’ worth of racial wounds, or your fantasies about how Webb could somehow bring that all-important white working class male back to the fold. Most especially, it’s not about the choice of the ultra-manly Webb as a vicarious endorsement of your masculinity.

Selecting a vice president is about choosing someone who would not detract from the president’s message and agenda, who is well-qualified to be president, and who upholds the basic values of the Democratic party. James Webb is not this person, but there are plenty other people out there who fit the bill.