Smugness vs. Humility: What Works in Conservative and Progressive Leadership

Remember the letter that George H.W. Bush wrote to Bill Clinton after the 1992 presidential election? He left it in the desk at the Oval Office for Clinton to receive post-inauguration. The letter was considered the mark of civility in that a defeated Bush wished Clinton well, and told Clinton that he was now  “our” president, and “your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”

Describing the essence of Bush’s action, Andy Smarick in The Weekly Standard asks where the days of unity went:

It demonstrates America’s proud tradition of peaceful transitions of power and highlights Bush’s ability to show kindness and maintain impeccable manners in what must have been his most dispiriting professional moment. But that generous letter is also the byproduct of a worldview; it’s a point on a straight line between a political philosophy and an approach to public policy. We do ourselves, and our politics, a disservice by separating the letter and its sentiments from the author’s views on governing. They’re part of the same fabric.

Smarick argues that the qualities of modesty and humility are conservative in nature and inform attitudes about collectivism. He points to a 2011 article by the University of Toronto-Scarborough’s Andrew Stark that explains that by their very nature, conservatives don’t put a lot of faith in the ability to herd people into political units to be measured and organized even while they trust their fellow man to make good decisions.

As a result, Smarick notes:

(C)onservatives are deeply skeptical about governing strategies that presume too much about our capacities—for instance, centralization, muscular government, expert administrators, and grand schemes. This naturally leads the conservative to seek to limit the authority of others: decentralization, the separation of governmental powers into branches, trusting small voluntary associations over compulsory state bodies, putting faith in markets over central plans. But—crucially—this humility extends down to the self and shapes how the temperamentally conservative individual engages in the public’s business: I am limited. I may be wrong. I need to trust others.

It was because of his humility that Bush succeeded in building coalitions, whether global or in Washington. It was his “personal modesty, deference to longstanding institutions, and dependence on local decision-making” that enabled him to cross the bridge between his own decision-making and majority rule, Smarick says.

But much of that behavior has gone the way of the 20th century. The difference in progressive vs. conservative leadership has grown wider over the last 25 years even as the right now trends toward left-leaning styles of governance.

For progressives, the whole notion of humility is long out the window, if it ever was a guiding principle. Leftists themselves acknowledge that idea, Smarick says, pointing to several liberals who have acknowledged their own “smug” condescension for the idea that people can take care of themselves. This distrust of self-governance manifests itself in the presumption that right-leaning Americans are uninformed and that makes them wrong, and that means they need to be told how to behave and what to think.

Yet, that’s precisely what blinded the left to the rise of Donald Trump. The left believed that Americans want to be organized and told what to do, and in the telling, they could be led to conclusions that they wouldn’t reach on their own. Trump, using the very bombast and conceit that is considered uncharacteristic of the right, tapped into the frustration felt by the half of America that was sick of being told that they don’t know what’s good for them.

With the campaign over, governing begins, and as humility and modesty are not guiding traits for Trump, therein lies the danger for conservatives who don’t want top-down policies. Trump’s success will depend on being able to decentralize governance while not letting his opponents or his followers slip into badgering Americans into accepting what’s good for them. Trump must pair his leadership and management skills with the conservative traits of humility, modesty, and trust in others to demonstrate how limited government can help the most people succeed.

The outright rejection of alternative viewpoints brings with it inaction and further division. This is true for both left and right. Trump needs to form the connective tissue to pull together these disparate parts. Multiple interests coming together to create agreeable and elastic solutions will have the greatest impact on our economic and cultural outcomes.

Smarick notes that the conciliatory victory speech by Trump is a good start for maintaining the ground game of where political conservatives can go from here, even if society trends toward slogans not solutions.

(N)o one should be accused of cynicism for doubting that the national political scene is about to enter a golden age of humility. It may well be the case that politics will always privilege hubris. We get fired up for “hope and change,” “morning in America,” and “happy days are here again,” not for modest expectations and incrementalism. The buoyant confidence of FDR, Reagan, Bush 43, and Obama was rewarded with reelection. The humility of a Gerald Ford or Bush 41 was not.

But we should also recognize that the greatest line in our greatest president’s greatest speech masterfully blended conviction and modesty. Abraham Lincoln ended his second inaugural by encouraging the nation simultaneously to pursue justice while recognizing our limited ability to ascertain it—”with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” Perhaps appreciating—even embracing—the tension between those cardinal principles was essential for acting with malice toward none, offering charity to all, and binding up the nation’s wounds.

Read the entire article by Smarick in The Weekly Standard.

How to Reinvigorate the Marketplace of Ideas

A fierce competition of ideas is vital not only for the future of the free enterprise movement, but also for the future of American society. Intense debate and rigorous argument are the proving ground for good ideas and good public policy.

But the marketplace of ideas needs to have principled competitors, and few politicians in Washington seem to understand and articulate the core principles of free enterprise, much less apply them to policy.

Still, one simple point that is often neglected in heated campaign seasons like this one is this: No matter which side you’re on, the vast majority of your political opponents are actually not stupid, nor are they evil.

Let’s not mistake this for some milquetoast assertion that disagreement is in itself wrong, that everything should be settled easily by simple consensus. You hear that around Washington sometimes. I don’t buy it, and you shouldn’t either.

But there’s also a middle ground between consensus and the way Washington too frequently operates. The “polarization industrial complex” fans the flames of bad-faith accusations in order to drive up audience numbers and profits, and it’s no surprise that so many of us start to feel a bitter cynicism about the other side of the aisle. Political disputes give way to personal animus and we hardly even realize it’s happening.

Giving in to these feelings and allowing ourselves to caricature our opponents can seem to offer some short-term catharsis. But something in our core militates against it. Deep down, we know that most progressives, most conservatives, and most independents seek to improve the country and lift up the vulnerable.

In addition to being simply inaccurate, caricaturing our opponents also carries a practical cost. It erodes away the civil disagreements that are so vital for building up the competition of ideas. Innovative thinking is attenuated and political gridlock becomes more entrenched.

Declare Independence From Contempt

So what’s the solution? How can we start a revolt against the politics of contempt?

I offer an old tactic to try out. Actively make a personal effort to substitute kindness for contempt. When you feel especially frustrated or angry in a conversation, deliberately try to marshal up a sense of brotherhood to take those feelings’ place. You’d be surprised how quickly answering hostility with love can turn an entire interaction upside down.

Case in point: Shortly after I published my first book for mass consumption, Who Really Cares, I received an email from a reader. My first reaction: Hey, someone actually read my book! But when I opened the message, I was greeted by a point-by-point attempt to rebut my whole thesis. The criticisms were scathing and — I thought — unreasonable.

At first, I was infuriated. I started drafting a thorough reply. But then I realized that an aggravated response was going to accomplish nothing. Instead, I responded with a note thanking the reader for picking up my book. I expressed gratitude that he had engaged with it so thoroughly.

His reply came quickly. It was about as shocking as the initial email: He immediately softened. He responded with kindness himself, sanding down the rough edges on a few of his critiques. He even proposed we get dinner together the next time I was in his hometown.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. My friend the Dalai Lama teaches often about the value of answering anger with love. And growing up, it’s what I learned in Sunday school. Matthew 5:44 tells to pray for our enemies and those who would seek to persecute us.

Here’s the hard truth: The forces of division and polarization won’t be vanquished by one politician riding in on a white horse. The marketplace of ideas can only become less toxic from the bottom up. Fixing our politics begins with each of us treating our political adversaries with greater dignity and more respect.

Again, you might think this sounds a bit “out there.” This nation has been through a lot these past years, and the frustrations are understandable. But consider this: be open to the idea and appreciate the sentiment. Then try to act on it, and see if the outcome is better than the other route.

Sasse Vision Talks: America’s Political Parties Suffer a ‘Crisis of Political Vision’

College students are talking about robots and the role they will play in America’s future. The political parties are fighting over whether to make America Europe again or make America 1950 again.

No wonder young people are largely disinterested in the debate in Washington, concluded Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

“Neither of these (conversations) is very interesting,” Sasse said recently, telling an audience in Washington, D.C., that the major political parties in America would be considered failed enterprises if looked at from a business perspective.

“Both parties have a massive vision problem about what we need to accomplish in our time and place,” he said.  This problem is “a crisis of political vision that flows partly from the fact that we have two exhausted political parties right now. We have a conversation in Washington that is really stultifying relative to the vibrancy and vitality of the American people and relative to the magnitude of the challenges we face right now, and what really needs to be accomplished in our time,” Sasse said.

Sasse was speaking during the latest Vision Talks, a series of conversations convened by the American Enterprise Institute that puts together Washington policy insiders with social entrepreneurs, non-profits, and other enterprising organizations outside the Beltway.

Sasse described the other contributors to the most recent series of Vision Talks, including two men whose organizations help ex-inmates and disabled people find work, and a small business owner who challenged her state government to change the licensing requirements for hair braiders, as “heroic” in their efforts to live freely and independently while contributing to their communities.

These types of people and organizations are looking outside of Washington to create solutions that honor the dignity of all the natural rights of everybody, American ideals that are close to being extinguished if the political parties can’t change their respective directions, he said.

Noting a Pew research study that found that 203 of the 230 largest metro areas in the nation — containing 75 percent of the U.S. population — have a shrinking middle class, Sasse said America’s political parties aren’t up to the task of laying down a vision for the future because they look at the new information economy using the lens of politics relevant to the industrial era.

Republicans “are suffering from a declining customer base, because root core Republican voters are dying. The Democrats don’t have the same customer base problem, but they have a massive product problem because the Democrats are still trying to pretend that if you just expand 1965 entitlement programs and the chassis of the federal government from 50 and 51 years ago, that somehow this is only three tinkers away from being a working system. It’s not true. The Democrats are trying to sell central planning in the age of Uber,” Sasse said.

The presidential candidates aren’t explaining to young people, the post-industrialist up and comers, solutions to address job market prospects in a rapidly changing economy.

“Jobs that are routinize-able, if that’s a word, and predictable, those jobs are going to become more and more rapidly disintermediated and disrupted. We’re going to need to create a completely different kind of conversation than we’ve ever had before, and our politics are not really up to that level of disruptive conversation.”

Fortunately, Sasse said, all is not lost. America still has a lot to offer, and it’s up to the people to take the opportunity during this upheaval to form the future.

“The distinction between politics and culture is really important. There’s a lot that’s broken in our politics, but there’s a lot about our culture that’s still hopeful. and there’s a lot to dream about and lot to try to recover, and culture is well upstream of politics. Politics is downstream from culture.”

Watch the entirety of Sasse’s remarks in AEI’s Vision Talks.