The Corrosion of Conservatism

Max Boot, “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left The Right,” Liveright Publishing, 2018, 214 pp.

This book traces author Max Boot’s transformation from Republican foreign policy adviser to a no-Trumper as he observed his rapidly corroding Republican Party.  He describes his ideological journey from a conservative to a man without a party, describing the polarization of US politics that leaves anyone who is not a socialist or a far-right populist feeling increasingly disenfranchised.  It’s hard to believe that today the center is less populated than the fringes, at least during primary elections.  

Boot believes America needs a center-right party—either a reborn GOP or an entirely new party—free of any taint of Trumpism.  This dreamed-for party would be socially liberal, fiscally conservative, pro-environment, internationalist, pro-defense, pro-gun control, pro-immigration.  Things that cannot be compromised by this party are rule of law, opposition to racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of prejudice.   This new party would be optimistic and inclusive rather than hateful and divisive.  Unfortunately, the last successful third party was formed in 1854.   

Pronouncing Mexican immigrants to be “rapists,” Donald Trump announced his 2015 presidential bid, causing Max Boot to think he was watching a dystopian science-fiction movie. The respected conservative historian couldn’t fathom that the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan could endorse such an unqualified reality-TV star. Yet the Twilight Zone episode that Boot believed he was watching created an ideological dislocation so shattering that Boot’s transformation from Republican foreign policy adviser to celebrated anti-Trump columnist becomes the dramatic story of The Corrosion of Conservatism.  I made this same journey and still am searching for a book that convincingly describes how Trump got through the primary process—something is drastically wrong with a political system yielding such a result.

Boot describes his ideological journey beginning with his political coming-of-age as a young émigré from the Soviet Union, enthralled with the National Review and the conservative intellectual tradition of Russell Kirk and F. A. Hayek. Against his personal journey, Boot simultaneously traces the evolution of modern American conservatism, jump-started by Barry Goldwater’s canonical The Conscience of a Conservative, to the rise of Trumpism and its gradual corrosion of what was once the Republican Party.

My Notes:

Pg. xvii:  Author came to America as a six-year-old from the Soviet Union in 1976 and feels totally indebted that his family was granted asylum.

Pg. xix:  Definition of Conservatism by the author:  Conservatism means prudent and incremental policymaking based on empirical study; support for American global leadership and American allies; a strong defense and a willingness to oppose the enemies of freedom; respect for character, community, personal virtue, and family; limited government and a fiscal prudence; freedom of opportunity rather than equality of outcome; a social safety net big enough to help the neediest but small enough to avoid stifling individual initiative, enterprise, and social mobility; individual liberty to the greatest extent possible consistent with public safety; freedom of speech and of the press; immigration and assimilation; and colorblindness and racial integration.  Looming above them are The Declaration of Independence which defines the US as a nation bound together not by shared heritage or blood but rather by a shared belief in the ‘self-evident’ truths ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ While the Declaration lays out the goals of self-government, the Constitution defines how we can achieve them. 

Pg. 18f:  One of the most important contributions to the Republican Party that William Buckley made from his perch at National Review was to drive assorted cranks and extremists out of the ranks of the right, such as the John Birchers.  Additionally, Buckley saw through Donald Trump, whom he identified as a narcissist and demagogue all the way back in 2000.  “When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection,” Buckley wrote.  But by the time Trump began running for president in 2015, Buckley had been in his grave for seven years.

Pg. 29:  The author has broken free from the pro-gun orthodoxy he once favored.  He now favors stricter gun controls, which are permissible even under the latest Second Amendment rulings, because the only explanation for the prevalence of gun violence in America—we have six times as many firearms homicides as Canada and nearly sixteen times as many as Germany—is the ready availability of guns. 

Pg. 53:  President Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 made possible the rise of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq.  Instead, what was needed was a counterinsurgency strategy, exactly what General David Petraeus had implemented when he took command in early 2007.  The result then was a 90 percent fall in violence over the next two years. (Counterinsurgency involves sending in more troops and pushing them out to provide security to the populace, rather than hunkering down in Forward Operating Bases isolated by Hesco barriers and blast walls from the people.)

Pg. 61:  Trump had no government experience or policy knowledge.  His past was full of affairs and divorces, of (six) corporate bankruptcies and stiffed vendors, of shady ventures like Trump University that led to lawsuits and recriminations.  He was an opportunist who had regularly flip-flopped between the Democratic and Republican Parties, and he had given copious campaign donations to liberal Democrats. 

Pg. 63:  Trump has a proclivity for conspiracy theories having spent years pushing the ‘birtherism’ hoax that Obama had forged his birth certificate.  He lies incessantly: PolitiFact found in mid-2016 that 78 percent of all of Trump’s fact-checked statements were either mostly or entirely false, compared to only 16 percent of Hillary Clinton’s.

Pg. 86:  Obama became aware of Russia’s meddling in the US election in September of 2016.  He dispatched officials to Capitol Hill to plead for bipartisan unity in confronting the Kremlin.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shamefully put party above patriotism by refusing to cooperate.  This was another low point for the Republican Party.  Obama feared to do more without Republican support as he would then be vulnerable to Trump’s cynical charges that the election was ‘rigged.’  The GOP had made itself complicit in something close to treason.  Throughout that fall, Trump called for his opponent to be locked up and refused to say that he would accept the election results if he lost.  The final blow to Republican self-respect occurred in October with the release of the Access Hollywood tape. 

Pg. 88f:  Along with the stolen emails provided by the Russians, the FBI’s unwise updates on the Clinton investigation—while keeping quiet about the ongoing investigation into Trump-Russia ties—would help seal the fate of Clinton’s campaign.  The author wrote during this time that the strongest case for Clinton is what she is not: She is not racist, sexist, or xenophobic.  She is not cruel, erratic, or volatile.  She is not a bully or an authoritarian personality.  She is not ignorant or unhinged.  Trump won 90 percent of GOP votes and lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes but eked out an Electoral College victory by a margin of fewer than 80,000 votes in three Rust Belt states.  Trump had appealed to the white working-class voters in the Midwest who had become disenchanted by the party’s liberal positions on issues such as national security, crime, abortion, and civil rights. 

Pg. 90:  Between 1980 and 2014, the top 1 percent of the country experienced 203 percent growth. And in those same years, nearly 40 percent of US factory jobs disappeared.  Those statistics, as much as anything else, helped to explain why so many people were so desperate for salvation that they were willing to turn to a reality TV host as their savior. 

Pg. 101ff:  The case for Trump is based on:

1.      A strong economy.  Even though Trump inherited a strong economy, this is overlooked.  And, in fact, Trump’s policies jeopardized the economy.  His tariffs and attacks on companies such as Amazon spooked the markets.  The stock market had risen 37 percent for Obama between his inauguration and April while Trump's results were 19 percent for the same period.

2.      Trump’s defeat of ISIS.  The game plan for ISIS defeat was largely devised and implemented by Obama.  Trump’s 2018 threat to pull out remaining 2,000 US troops in Syria jeopardized all of the gains against ISIS.

3.      Trump’s pullout from treaties abominated by the right—the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal.  Also, denial of climate warming. 

4.      Trump’s move of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem had been promised by other Presidents but never carried out.  This may have been due and was one of his campaign pledges.

5.      Trumps Summit with Kim Jong Un is starting to appear as a dangerous political stunt and nothing more.

6.      Massive Tax Cut:  we now have a Trillion Dollar deficit. This was Trump’s major and virtually sole legislative achievement—and it was the product of congressional negotiations into which Trump had little input.  A tax cut was needed to align US corporations better with international competitors—but it should have been done in a revenue-neutral way.

7.     

      A host of regulations that Trump ordered repealed—even though the extent and impact of that deregulatory push was wildly exaggerated.  Goldman Sachs researchers determined that the actual scale of the Trump deregulation was so limited that it had no appreciable impact on the economy.

8.      

     Trump did succeed in getting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh appointed to the Supreme Court and a host of lesser-known conservatives to the lower courts.

9.      As president, Trump would use a private cell phone for sensitive conversations that represented a much more significant potential security breach than Hillary’s emails ever did.

1

      The most compelling argument for Trump is how he triggers liberals.  Sure, conservatives would concede, sometimes Trump goes too far or says something he should not, but ‘at least he fights.’  For much of the right, there is no higher end in politics than to annoy liberal ‘elites’—or now also conservative #Never-Trump elites.

(This was all written before the Wall controversy shut down the govt. for 35 days, the Mueller indictments, the cabinet members displaced, and the chaos of the White House was revealed).

Pg. 113ff:  A summarization of just what Trump has done that is so wrong:

1.      

      Racism.  The Republican Party, as well as Trump, have a checkered record even though back in 1964-5 more Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act than did Democrats.  However, recently we have Charlottesville, Flag kneeling, pardoning of Joe Arpaio,   All Trump supporters are not racists but virtually all racists, it seems, are Trump supporters.

2.   

          Nativism.  In 1980 Reagan used the phrase “Make America Great Again” but Reagan’s speech was not to bash immigrants but to hail their contributions.  Reagan signed legislation in 1986 that legalized three million undocumented immigrants, and he set in motion the negotiations that produced NAFTA.  His dream—never realized—was to allow free travel between the US, Canada, and Mexico.

3.      Collusion:  We know two things for a fact about the 2016 election.  Trump won a narrow victory in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.  Second, we know that Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election and that Putin aspired to help elect Trump, or more likely, disrupt the US democratic process.  The Kremlin propaganda blitz reached 126 million Americans via Facebook alone.  We still do not know whether there was conscious collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.  Putin could barely conceal his glee in 2018 when Trump launched trade wars with America’s NATO allies and called the European Union a ‘foe.’

       

     The Rule of Law.  The Comey affair needs no further elaboration after Trump admitted to Lester Holt of NBC News that he was determined to fire Comey in order to stop the investigation of the ‘Russia thing.’ 

  

5.       Fiscal Irresponsibility:  In 2012 Paul Ryan stated: “We have a debt crisis right in front of us, and what brings down Empires-o-past and future—is debt.”  At the time the debt was $16 trillion; in 2018 it is now at more than $21 trillion.

6.      The End of the Pax Americana:  Since Harry Truman, America has promoted collective security, international law, free trade, and human rights.  Trump’s pullout from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was an economic and geopolitical gift to China.  Trump welcomes a Trade War stating they are easy to win.  He seems not to know that 88 percent of the loss of US manufacturing jobs between 2006 and 2013 was due to automation.  American power was already declining under Bush and Obama but Trump has accelerated the decline.

Pg. 151:  Here are the costs that America has paid, so far, for the Trump presidency.  His supporters, meaning almost all Republicans, have rationalized the president’s racism and nativism, the evidence that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to undermine American democracy his attempted obstruction of justice and general assault on the rule of law, his efforts to spread lies and undermine the press, his violations of the most basic ethical norms, his staggering fiscal irresponsibility, and his assault on seventy-plus years of American international leadership in promoting free trade and free societies.  Trump is undermining the foundations of American democracy.  And in return, they have gotten…what? A few conservative judges, a big but unnecessary tax cut, the repeal of some regulations, some gains against ISIS, a substance-free summit with North Korea. 

Pg. 182:  Fox News has turned itself into the American version of the Russian broadcast RT network, supporting anything the President says or does as well as peddling insidious conspiracy theories on his behalf.  They pushed the ‘birther’ claims, Obamacare death panels, Hilary sold uranium to the Russians, and that a Deep State is plotting against Trump. 

Pg. 211:  The GOP is turning off the young.  A 2017 poll found that only 19 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 approved of Trump’s presidency while 67 percent disapproved.