A possibility Helen doesn’t explore explicitly is that Obama’s broad but thin and vague popularity is in some significant measure the consequence of stale ideas on the right — or at least of the inability of the right to translate their ideas into practice. We should wonder more discerningly about what it really means for an idea to be stale. Perhaps it means that conviction and commitment keeps it fresh, and that all the conviction in the world isn’t worth much if the commitment lapses. "But we believe in small government!" Cold comfort.
Or perhaps it’s in reference to specific policy ideas. Or perhaps bigger ideas — philosophical ones. Typically these are mushed together under the rubric of "ideology," which I suspect isn’t the most helpful way to look at things, although people might often think in those terms. In thinking about what idea freshening really is or means, we have to think about what an ideology really is, and how it differs from a platform of policy propositions, a tradition, a body of cultural commitments, a disposition, and so on. I’m hinting here that an ideology is, maybe inherently, an incoherent mash of culture and politics, of foundational and nonfoundational ideas. Our foundational ideas and our nonfoundational ideas are inevitably and naturally going to play together on the playground, yes: but we want them to play nice, meaning not mean but not too nice either.
So it might be the case that fresh cultural thinking for conservatives means a rededication to the practice of cultural conservatism and a step back from national cultural politics; and it might be the case that fresh political thinking for conservatives means a rededication to the practice of political conservativsm and a step back from fierce ideologically-driven partisanship. It just might be the nature of policy contestation in the national political arena of our large democracy that puts these kinds of mights in conflict and in internal tension, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth the effort. Unless you care a lot about ‘purity’ in culture, politics, or ideology. Hmmm.
