President Obama meets the Press and the Challenges to Conservatives

President Whoopass cleaned the reporters' clocks last night in his second press conference. He called on an array of reporters from Ebony, Stars &Stripes, Politico and even the Washington Times at the expense of the more established media. His putdown of Ed Henry of CNN put that network into a tizzy, where they tried to spin the rest of the press conference as deteriorating after their reporter demoralized President Obama. President Obama stayed and went back to and stayed on his message that his budget was inseparable from the recovery. Earlier in the day Republicans--in this case Mitch McConnell--moaned about how the budget didn't cohere. It's obvious that they hadn't listened to any of the Administration's briefings. In fact, it is one of the only budgets in my memory that does hang together and is an integrated whole.

President Obama has been trying to comunicate beyond the media filter, a filter that is more and more obviously protective of the wealthy and corporate interests. His appearance on the Jay Leno Show netted the highest rating for that show in many a year and another appearance on 60 Minutes topped 17 million. I still revert to my primary campaign days of watching his public appearances on C-Span so I am spared the inanity of the chattering class. The Obama strategy is obviously working since he retains his high approval ratings, despite outliers like Zogby and the compromised Rasmussen polls.

Pro-lifers are protesting that President Obama will be receiving an honorary degree from Norte Dame--like almost all his predecessors. The Catholic Bishop in Indiana has announced he will boycott the proceedings. I'm sure he's be missed. Soon to be a Catholic convert, Newt Gingrich commented that Obama's policies were against Catholic doctrine. The twice-divorced Gingrich will be converting to Catholicism soon so he and his wife can worship together. A quick study--he's already mastered Catholic doctrine.

Newt has been in other news creating a new group that will bring together fiscal and social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives tend to blame evangelicals for the declining fortunes of the Republican party and this is Newt's effort to bridge the divide. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Southern Agrarian Literary Movement, except no one can write. The new 'City on the Hill"--the post-Reagan utopia--will be the 21st century revival of the South with an emphasis on a rural culture isolated from science and modernity and steeped in the religiousity of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. The wealthy will be the plantation holders of old. That might explain conservatives' interest in South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford, former Goldman Sachs manager, who refused the stimulus money, despite his state having one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and a school system that continues to deteriorate.

A leading conservative publisher and writer approached me the other night about the state of the conservative movement. A literary person schooled in the more philosophical underpinings of conservatism, he lamented the rise of people such as Ann Coulter and G.Gordan Liddy as spokespeople for conservatism. But in our conversation, it was clear that he had no knowledge of the detritus appearing on right-wing websites or the poseurs on cable news. He had not caught Glenn Beck's recent act on the 9/12 Project. Beck quite proudly has announced on his radio show he has never read Hayek and the other philosophical pillars of conservatism. He even rejoices in this, declaring them boring. Nor had my friend been aware of the re-emergence of racism on the right and some of the more inflammatory rhetoric against Barack Obama, whom he thinks is too inexperienced and tackling too many things at the same time.

Personally, I believe we are back at the moment in my youth when William F. Buckley,Jr in the National Review started banning certain types of political behavior from the conservative line-up--the John Birch Society, the KKK, the blatant segregationists and more fringe groups. In New Jersey at that time, Rev. Carl McIntyre had a pirate radio station beaming off Cape May,denouncing Communists, which included President Eisenhower. It was from this morass that modern conservatism had to emerge. But now it has sunk back into the swamp, now even courting secessionists. Like teenagers, more conservatives are reverting to Ayn Rand's writings to launch their "Gault" movement based on the hero of Atlas Shrugged. In the old days,one was encouraged to read Russell Kirk to counter these tendencies or Randian urges.

The conservatives first must do a lot of housekeeping and housecleaning before they can reconstitute a viable movement. First, they must recognize and assimilate the idea that the Bush-Cheney embrace of the unitary theory of the executive was an egregious violation of conservative principles. Secondly, they must formulate some idea of the public good, something that has been sadly lacking in recent years. Thirdly, they must debate with social conservatives how intrusive do they want government in people's personal lives. The domination of the Republican Party by social conservatives is frightening and a leading cause of intolerance in this country.I would also suggest it is the most off-putting aspect of the Republicans, preventing them from any real political reach in the Northeast and the Midwest.

Conservatives must finally deal with the whole idea of governance. In a time of almost Depression, how can one reconcile a philosophy of small government with the suffering of the population on a large scale? For a group that has joined with forces arguing against evolution in school systems, how can one advocate social darwinism as they are doing as a default argument? And why have the wealthy been seen as virtuous in light of the behavior of bankers and Wall Street operators?

The problem with the last Administration--as conservative as politicians can be--was the reliance on the rhetoric of ideology as a replacement for competence. In the final analysis, that was found profundly wanting.

It seems to me that the first requirement for any conservative recovery is to start telling the truth about the recent past and how conservatives fueled in their hubris by Karl Rove betrayed their own principles by seeking dominant control of all governing institutions and sought to bend established constitutional safeguards to their own ideological benefit.