In a fascinating admission today, David Brooks claims that of all the GOP candidates the one “who comes closest to my worldview is Newt Gingrich.”
Despite his erratically shifting views and odd phases, he continually returns to this core political refrain: He talks about using government in energetic but limited ways to increase growth, dynamism and social mobility.
So why doesn’t Brooks support Gingrich for president?
In the first place, Gingrich loves government more than I do. He has no Hayekian modesty to restrain his faith in statist endeavor. For example, he has called for “a massive new program to build a permanent lunar colony to exploit the Moon’s resources.” He has suggested that “a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.”
I’m for national greatness conservatism, but this is a little too great.
If this sort of Big Government conservatism scares a Big Government-loving conservative like Brooks, you can imagine how those of us with less love for Leviathan feel about Gingrich’s surging popularity. The most troubling aspect is that Newt combines his views with an excess of enthusiasm. As I noted last year, this is the exact opposite of what we need. In the coming election we don’t need the second-coming of Teddy Roosevelt to fan the flames of National Greatness. What we need is a Coolidge clone that is able to brandish a wet blanket. In fact, we need a Wet Blanket movement—an enterprise of inactivity designed to sap any and all enthusiasm for political and governmental robustness.
Sadly, there is only one man who could lead such a movement and he died back in 1933. I’m speaking, of course, of our greatest modern president: Calvin Coolidge.
The liberal journalist Walter Lippman, in his 1926 essay, “Calvin Coolidge: Puritan De Luxe,” wrote an unintentionally beautiful tribute to the patron saint of small-government conservatism that provides an outline for what is needed today:
Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge, and nobody should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for the soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life.
The White House is extremely sensitive to the first symptoms of any desire on the part of Congress or of the executive departments to do something, and the skill with which Mr. Coolidge can apply a wet blanket to an enthusiast is technically marvelous. There have been Presidents in our time who knew how to whip up popular enthusiasm. There has never been Mr. Coolidge’s equal in the art of deflating interest. The mastery of what might be called the technique of anti-propaganda is worthy of prolonged study by students of public opinion. The naive statesmen of the pre-Coolidge era imagined that it was desirable to interest the people in their government, that public discussion was a good thing, that indignation at evil was useful. Mr. Coolidge is more sophisticated. He has discovered the value of diverting attention from government, and with exquisite subtly that amounts to genius, he has used dullness and boredom as political devices.
It is difficult to read this passage without a sigh of resignation. Our culture is able to provide us with innumerable dull and boring politicians. But how many have the ability to use tedium as a sophisticated political tool?
Sadly, what is needed most is the type of politician we can no longer raise up: the electable deflator. Imagine if we had a political party that was capable of creating even one national politician who had such a grim, determined, alert inactivity. (The concept is so foreign to us today that even conservatives have a hard time imagining what that would look like.) Imagine also if we were able to produce thousands of activists—or rather “inactivists”—willing to neutralize and thwart political activity wherever it showed signs of life.
If you are unable to create such a mental picture it is not surprising. Such a concept is anathema to most “conservative activists.” They aspire to be right-wing Alinskyites because they love the fight, love the energy, and—most of all—love the power that comes from political engagement. They chafe at the idea that the liberals are allowed to have all the fun, with their marches and rallies and bombastic rhetoric, and want to get in on the action too. They want a counter-revolution, not merely because they oppose liberalism, but because, like liberals, they enjoy the thrill of perpetual revolutionary fervor.
I can empathize, of course. I too have a fervor—a fever, in fact—for political inactivity. I want to be part of a movement that makes electoral politics so boring that rather than having term limits, we’ll need laws requiring politicians to serve their full term. I want to join a party that make politics and government work so dull that political journalists and elected officials dream of leaving their fields for the exciting worlds of actuarial science and telemarketing.
I want to thrown in my lot with others who want to throw a wet blanket over politics and whose desire is to dampen the enthusiasm for all forms of political activity. I want to consort with citizens who are willing to arrest the ardor, dash the devotion, sap the spirit, and zap the zeal from anything that remotely resembles political enthusiasm. I want to create a new party, dedicated to the mastery of the art of anti-propaganda and committed to the conscientious devotion of alert inactivity.
If this is your dream too, then I hope you’ll join me in the Wet Blanket movement.
Joe Carter is the web editor of First Things. You can follow him on Twitter.
December 9th, 2011 | 12:30 pm
Joe:
Sign me up. I’ll be fulfilling my membership pledge by engaging in an OAC protest (Occupy arm chair), with a copy of “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Wet blankets of the world, untie!
December 9th, 2011 | 12:43 pm
This sounds a lot like a column by John Derbyshire at National Review from a few years back: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/223160/liberty-liberty/john-derbyshire.
Incidentally, he talked about his support for Ron Paul there (hint, hint).
December 9th, 2011 | 1:08 pm
Seems like Derbyshire wrote a book that had Coolidge in the title, too.
December 9th, 2011 | 1:14 pm
In fact, we need a Wet Blanket movement—an enterprise of inactivity designed to sap any and all enthusiasm for political and governmental robustness.
Kind of odd being that many progressives bash Obama for being just this.
December 9th, 2011 | 1:22 pm
“For example, he has called for ‘a massive new program to build a permanent lunar colony to exploit the Moon’s resources.’ He has suggested that ‘a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.’
I’m about ninety percent certain this happened on “The Simpsons.” I wasn’t aware we were this close to nominating Mr. Burns for high office.
December 9th, 2011 | 1:23 pm
Stephen B This sounds a lot like a column by John Derbyshire . . .
Scott Gallupo noted in a post from last year (that I just found) that this is a recurring theme among conservatives:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/scott-galupo/2010/07/27/combating-tea-party-populism-with-conservative-inactivism-is-a-fantasy
I hadn’t read any of those articles before, but it doesn’t surprise me that this is a favorite fantasy of conservatives.
December 9th, 2011 | 2:02 pm
Silent Cal — weaned on a dill pickle.
Ronald Reagan’s favorite president; the Gipper had Coolidge’s portrait installed in the cabinet room in 1981, much to the horror of the media-academic complex.
For a great read on how Coolidge was “Borked” by historians and political scientists, read Thomas Silver’s “Coolidge and the Historians.”
December 9th, 2011 | 3:38 pm
Even Calvin Coolidge, however, realized that he was no longer a good fit for the people Americans had become during the Jazz Age. Perhaps his most astute observation of them all.
Newt is fatally infected with the virus of grandiosity. Obama is like Coolidge compared to Newt in this regard.
I miss Paul Tsongas: he was the New Democrats’ Calvin Coolidge 20 years ago. Bill Clinton took care of that one, and cancer finished the rest.
December 9th, 2011 | 7:58 pm
Was he really serious about the outer space projects? I find it hard to believe that anyone could really suggest something like that. Is it possible these quotations were taken out of context?
December 10th, 2011 | 1:38 am
America needs fiscal and monetary policy to pull it out from crushing unemployment and economic stagnation. Any “wet blanket” would quickly find himself responsible for an economic lost decade and would face appropriate retribution from the public.
This is the problem when political fantasies run up against the real world.
December 10th, 2011 | 9:23 am
We need neither another Theodore Roosevelt nor a Calvin Coolidge. We need a Dwight Eisenhower. We need neither enthusiastic expansion of the government nor hands-off economics. Neither has worked very well. We need calm, professional, fiscally conservative, economically center-right leadership and policies. That approach gave America the most prosperous period in its history. We need less ideology (Marxist or Randian) and more pragmatism based on actual on-the-ground experience.
Too many today forget that just barely seven-months after Coolidge left office, the stock market crashed and soon thereafter the worst economic disaster since the 14th century ensued.
December 10th, 2011 | 11:33 am
Psychoanalyzing Gingrich’s personality is wrong-headed. Selecting a president this way is indicative of the very boomer narcissism you and Brooks purport to decry.
Amateur punditry is the death of representative democracy. It turns our politics into an obsession over celebrity, scandal, and superficial traits rather than a sober judgment of policy, record, and character. Hey, remember when Newt threw a fit on Air Force One! Remember when he said put mirrors on the moon!
If you want to know why every politician since Coolidge seems unfit to serve, look at the audience they have to momentarily enthrall, rather than a mature citizenry they have to persuade. Look at yourselves.
And Brooks criticizes Gingrich for grandiosity? Physician, heal thyself.
December 10th, 2011 | 5:57 pm
I submit Ron Paul as a contemporary Calvin Coolidge.
December 11th, 2011 | 8:48 am
Mark is correct. Any President or Party following Joe’s advise would be quickly dispatched from power. What people say that want (small, inactive, ineffective, limited government) and what they really want (responsible, active government), are two different things. A “wet blanket” approach would be irresponsible. Small, inactive and somnolent government means you’re leaving “the market” and business men and chance to solve problems and police corruption. Any clear eyed person should be skeptical of “the market” being entirely in-charge after the 2008 financial crash. No. We need limited but strong, active government. The American people are not going to tolerate another Coolidge.
December 11th, 2011 | 1:12 pm
We need a president who will (a) cut entitlement spending, and take other measures to balance the budget; (b) cut back on government interference generally; and (c) open up domestic energy; without (d) messing up our foreign policy too badly.
A-C require a hands-on leader. I honestly don’t know whether Romney or Gingrich would do a better job, and neither, I think, does anyone else, including either of them. One of the variables is Congress: perhaps with Democrats in charge of the Senate, Gingrich would be better, but with Republicans like Paul Ryan in the drivers seat, Romney would be better.
Anyway, don’t worry about mining the moon: Gingrich’s flakier ideas would never get through even a Republican Congress that doesn’t seem to much like him, anyway.
December 11th, 2011 | 5:57 pm
I like to say “dismantle the government” and I mean at all levels.
I’d like to quote Mark Steyn instead of the Derb and what he said the other day: sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive.
I’m afraid we are on that slippery slope.
From the majority leader of the Senate passionately defending Federal funding for cowboy poetry festivals to petty municipal goons handing out tickets to children running lemonade stands it certainly seems we have lost our wits. Our gov’t is like the old joke about the person who says of their bank account: I can’t be overdrawn, I still have checks left!
We also seem too willing to cede every decision to some stranger, we seem too moribund to think for ourselves.
So, in conclusion I must agree with those who say it is not the right time for wet blanket-ism. But perhaps it is time for some, metaphorical of course, sledge hammers and chainsaws.
December 11th, 2011 | 6:35 pm
This is idle. Mr. Coolidge was honest and capable at superintending a government which was ensconced within a particular sort of political economy and political geography. The latter cannot be reconstructed and reconstructing the former would be a project which would require sustained attention over a period of decades. Ain’t gonna happen, and it is difficult to imagine Calvin Coolidge would ever have the ambition to execute such a project.
December 11th, 2011 | 6:40 pm
Too many today forget that just barely seven-months after Coolidge left office, the stock market crashed and soon thereafter the worst economic disaster since the 14th century ensued.
Enough. The Depression was exceptionally severe in North America and (to a lesser degree) in Central Europe. Not so much the rest of the world. The problematic monetary institutions responsible for the severity of the Depression in this country did not originate with the Coolidge Administration. The wretched decisions on how to respond to contemporary economic and financial conditions were made not by Coolidge but by his successor.
December 12th, 2011 | 12:26 am
Lets face it, we could dig Coolidge up and we would have an improvement on what we have there now.
Also, the government the incoming president will face and the country that they serve are vastly different today than 1923. So is the world. The people have lived in a nanny state for so long that any change meets resistance. The new leader needs to be someone with more than a few sound bites, but someone with a ton of creativity and knowing how the government works with proof they could lead to a change to say “end welfare as we know it” under a unwilling democratic president shows that Newt can lead a crusade effectively on a major nanny issue. Remember, Clinton not only signed the welfare reform which actually did have some impact on welfare, but declared the era of big government is over. Clinton was wrong on the second one as we have seen.
We need someone who thinks outside the box, but also someone who does not have to spend 3 years learning how the government works. We also need someone who can stand up to the attacks of the leftist bomb throwing well funded democrats and their PR arm we call the media. We need someone who can win the debates. Newt has already shown that he wins the debates almost every time. He will crush Obama even with allowing him to use his teleprompter.
December 12th, 2011 | 2:00 am
Sincere thanks to Mr Laughlin for some badly needed balance. So far as I can tell (and yes, I’m a gross amateur in these matters) yours is definitely one of the wilderness voices. Then again, I suppose it’s much easier – or is it more ministering to our pride? – to focus on and celebrate our blithely simplifying man-made ideas, rather than the “messier,” more complex God-made realities those ideas are (hopefully) meant to address.
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