Monday, February 25, 2008

Lorne Gunter: Welcome to the new ice age - Full Comment

Lorne Gunter: Welcome to the new ice age - Full Comment

So Ice Age or Global Warming fiasco?

I vote for neither being a likely provable hypothesis.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Conservatism and Lack of Ideas

Has Conservatism run out of ideas? Has it reached its end?

These are themes that I have heard bantered about lately, particularly as related to the rise of John McCain in the primary votes and Obama's discussion of Reagan's transformational effect on the body politic that Hillary Clinton tried to distort into a praise of Reagan over Bill Clinton.

Let's lay these current issues aside and deal with a growing myth that conservatism is out of ideas.

To say that a political movement is out of ideas is to assume that political movements are driven but specific legislative proposals. This is inherently false. That is not the way the human mind works.

(Since 80% of the human population is visually oriented in their method of thought and analysis, allow me to use the vocabulary of this method of thought to discuss this topic. The idea can easily be adapted to auditory and kinesthetic thought, too.)

People have a photograph or a movie in their respective minds of what the world should be in the ideal. They analyze the world of politics based on how close the political proposals come to that ideal or come to making that ideal come true. Some seek an ideal of process. ("Don't be mean in debate or advertising! I don't care the outcome as much.") Some seek an ideal of result. ("Don't make a hospital do THAT by legislation!")

Those who focus on the ideal of process tend to swing widely between different ideas and are very hard to keep on one side of the political aisle or the other. They tend to describe themselves as "moderates." They want the process of politics to similar to calm, academic debate that ends in polite applause and a genial trip to the pub with the loyal opponent to bask in the glory of an evening well spent.

Those who focus on the ideal of result tend to stick tenaciously to the result sought from politics, legislation, and executive action. The tend to identify themselves relative to a politic doctrine, so long as that is not likely to make them a social pariah at the cocktail party on Friday night.

Then there are those that seek to combine these two together. The order of process over result or result over process is likely to follow political success. Emphasis on result over process leads to more aggressive political behavior. Since winners in all forms of competition tend to be the more aggressive, choosing result over process tends to create short-term winners.

In the long term, this focus on success tends to create short cuts favoring small group benefits that anger the larger population. This creates a pendulum swing against the focus on results due to "corruption" of the desired result. Inherently, this small group benefit focus is what sunk the Democrats in 1994 with the House Banking Scandal and the Republicans in 2006 with earmarks and other petty scandals.

Consequently, long term political success is a blend of focus on a desired effect while not excessively favoring small groups which would derail the pursuit of the desired result.

The desired result goes back to the mental photograph or movie in the body politic's collective mind. Inherently, people are constantly updating their mental picture that they seek. They can never run out of ideas.

The question is can all these pictures be collected in a proper and orderly fashion that motivates those focused on result while not offending too many of those that are focused on process.

All this is to say, when a pundit claims that a politic party is out of ideas, they are really saying that they have a central, unifying message. It may be because the focus on the ideal of process suggests that the political message has been lost to backroom favoritism. It may be because the previously prevalent goals have been accomplished to the satisfaction of the average voter(e.g., Welfare Reform), become anachronistic (e.g., anti-Soviet, anti-Communism), or been proven a false goal (e.g., Bull Connor segregationism).

Neither the Republican Party or Democrat Party is out of ideas. The Democrat Party can't talk about many of their ideas publicly in great details, because they lose popularity when the public can analyze the likely outcome of their goals. They can't keep those with focus on result in the fold over time. They can easily lose those focused on process by the common tactics of their supporters, like labor union activists.

The Republican Party in Washington has lost credibility that it is willing to pursue the goals described by Conservatives. Those focused on result are angry and unwilling to facilitate those like John McCain who suggests that he is focused on the process without regard to any clear sense of the result sought.

Now let the melee begin in the darkness of little guiding picture of the actual results sought on either side of the aisle.