The Death of Conservatism?

Interesting dialogue between Reihan Salam and Sam Tanenhaus. I disagree with a fair amount of what Reihan says, but I think he’s right on the dual points that (a) one shouldn’t exaggerate the extent to which intellectuals (and in this particular case conservative intellectuals) really have causal impact on things, and (b) you need to understand the way politics plays out as primarily the result of structural factors rather than individual greatness or badness. The current era of stark polarization may lead to a lot of work that people find disagreeable partisan or polemical, but it’s a mistake to think that disagreeably partisan or polemical writers (or TV hosts) are causing the polarization.

An important caveat I would make to this whole thing is that for two years or so after September 11, 2001 George W. Bush faced an unusual situation in which the normal political laws of gravity only applied in an attenuated form. He had a ridiculously high favorable rating, the opposition party was strongly disinclined to get into fights with him, and the American public was expressing an unusually high level of confidence in the government. This gave him a lot more latitude than presidents normally have, and he used it, basically, to invade Iraq and to pass the 2003 tax cut bill. I think a different person, even an equally committed conservative, very possibly might have done d