What Trump and Trumpism really mean
Q. Congratulations! You have now covered more presidential elections than anybody else in NR history, even more than the sainted WFB himself. To what do you attribute your longevity?
A. To my resolve never to get mad about politics.
Q. Well, yes, but have you ever managed to get even?
A. Not yet.
Q. Whom did you support in the recent unpleasantness?
A. After passing through all five of Ms. Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief, I supported Donald J. Trump.
Q. Don’t I remember you writing anti-Trump pieces for NR and elsewhere?
A. You do. I had met Trump in another life and regarded him as bad news for the conservative movement. In the summer of 2015, I described him as an existential threat to the cause and urged conservatives to take him seriously.
Q. What was the reaction?
A. I was too early. Most of the opinion writers who take in each other’s laundry thought Trump was a joke. By the time NR published its “Against Trump” issue in the winter of 2016, it was too late. It just may be true that conservatives have no sense of rhythm. I once attended a conservative ball and entertained that notion.
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Q. Why did you finally fall in with Trump, knowing what damage he could inflict on the cause?
A. For two reasons. The first was formalistic. I had been part of the effort to impose a loyalty oath on the candidates. I have long believed that, when a candidate seeks his party’s nomination, he accepts the implicit obligation to abide by the result of the process. I regard the Kasich-style pocket veto as unacceptable.
Q. And the second reason?
A. I have never confused a political election with a beatification. It’s a messy process that produces deeply imperfect candidates. With the exception of the Reagan campaigns, every election in my lifetime has posed some form of the lesser-of-two-objections dilemma.
Q. That’s not the view of the Never Trumpers.
A. I admire the principled stand of my colleagues, even when some of them conflate cause with party. The problem for the political purist is that he tends to be disappointed with democracy itself whenever Pericles declines to run. The Founders would have been neither disappointed nor surprised to learn that Pericles wasn’t on the ballot this year. The genius of the Madisonian system is that it doesn’t require a genius to run it.
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Q. Did you follow the Trump campaign closely?
A. I hung around long enough to get to know the Trump voters — most importantly, that the animating message of their campaign, delivered in the many indigenous dialects of our vast polity, is: “I don’t like what’s going on here.” The Trump voters sense American decline and cultural erosion and the evanescing of opportunity and, to them, much of it appears to be the result of conscious decisions by the Obama-Clinton coterie. The media call the Trump voters “angry.” That’s only part of it. They are heartbroken.
Q. Any specifics?
A. Trump voters are miles ahead of conservative intellectuals in appreciating the salience of political corruption at the IRS and the DOJ. When both the tax power and the police power of the state are turned against citizens for thought crimes, we have crossed a bright red line. In that circumstance, government, at least in its small-r republican form, is unlikely to survive.
Q. And Trump voters think Trump might be the answer to that question?
A. They are supremely confident that Trump will clean out both agencies. They were almost as confident that Hillary would use them as models to corrupt other agencies.
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Q. Was that the issue that sold you on Trump?
A. I have a larger ambition for him. I think he has a puncher’s chance to break the grip of the Iron Quadrangle that controls our political culture: the one-party government bureaucracy; the pay-to-play rent seekers; the tax-exempt Left; and the symbiotic media class — roughly speaking, everybody who’s ever thought of associating themselves with the Clinton Global Initiative.
Q. Why do you think he has even a puncher’s chance?
A. He’s instinctively anti-bureaucratic. And highly skilled in the recriminative arts.
The core mission of the conservative movement is to protect the inherited culture and bolster the opportunity economy. We blew it.
Q. What else did you learn from the Trump voters?
A. I learned that conservative intellectuals have failed them, redundantly, on the issue of immigration. The first-level effects of incumbent policy, both cultural and economic, fall on rural America, border America, and deindustrializing America. The Acela corridor, by contrast, has felt only third-level effects, none of them material. My view has long been that the core mission of the conservative movement is to protect the inherited culture and bolster the opportunity economy. We blew it.
Q. What should our immigration policy be now?
A. We should adopt a pro-American policy. Border security first, and then if an applicant can help us — if he’s clean legally and medically and brings needed skills or capital investment — we want him. If he wants to spend more time with his relatives, that’s an argument for a guest permit, not citizenship.
Q. Have conservative intellectuals failed in the same way on the trade issue?
A. No, we’ve failed in a different way. The case for free trade is intellectually unassailable but politically indefensible. We offer no comfort to the two guys who’ve just been fired when we report that three other guys have just been hired. It’s the classic squeeze — concentrated pain in tension with dispersed benefit.
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Q. What should conservatives do now?
A. We should make the case for the free economy aggressively, but consider it a legitimate activity of state government to help those whacked by the swinging door of free trade. In other words, we should palliate individual pain while spreading the general prosperity.
Q. Was that Trump’s position?
A. For a time. He sensed the power of the idea early on, but then bent it out of shape. By the end of the campaign, he seemed to be supporting the proposition that companies exist not to make salable products but to preserve high-paying jobs.
Q. What’s ahead for the conservative movement?
A. With nuances aplenty, there are two basic options. The first is to withdraw to the castle, pull up the drawbridge, and labor to defend market share in what has become a tax-privileged and well-upholstered Conservatism, Inc. I was at one D.C.-based shop this week that took all of 45 minutes to adopt this “strategic plan.” That was a very Beltway thing to do.
#related#Q. And the other option?
A. The other option is to recognize that the game has changed, thanks in large part to the inadvertent contribution of Donald J. Trump. He has identified and at least semi-organized a large constituency previously unreachable by Conservatism, Inc. — soft Democrats, fallen Republicans, distracted moms, disheartened vets, category-averse minorities, regulation-strangled business people, country-class patriots, and more, many more. The only common denominator among these disparate groups is their values. They’re pro-family, pro-enterprise, and pro-America — pretty much the kinds of people our movement has claimed to represent these many years.
Q. And you’re suggesting that conservative intellectuals should make common cause with the Trump voters?
A. It’s the kind of coalition-building opportunity that comes around once in a generation. Think of the religious conservatives. Think of the neoconservatives. This opportunity is knocking loudly enough for even the hearing-impaired.
Q. What are your personal hopes for the movement?
A. My hope is that I’ll wake up tomorrow and be 48 years old and the editor of National Review magazine. It’s the best job in the country right now.