Quit Whining 3

I’ve addressed why the liberty v. tyranny trope self-betrays conservative history and why it corrodes America’s constitutional norms. But that’s not the bottom of it. Today’s conservative despair also sabotages our effectiveness in practical politics.

Below, I’ve addressed why the liberty v. tyranny trope self-betrays conservative history and why it corrodes America’s constitutional norms. But that’s not the bottom of it. Today’s conservative despair also sabotages our effectiveness in practical politics. Here we are in the summer of 2009, facing an administration that wants to insert government directly into health care provision. Bad idea, all conservatives would agree. Unfortunately, nonconservatives do not agree. About three-quarters of all Americans are prepared to agree that it is “extremely” or “quite” important to offer a government-run alternative to private health plans. (See question 34 in this link.) How to change their minds? Well here’s one way not to do it: holler that a public plan is the first (or final) step on the road to tyranny. After all, many of these people have parents or grandparents enrolled in Medicare, also a public plan. Is Medicare tyranny? Costly, irrational and unsustainable yes. But tyrannical? Politics is not an exercise in self-expression. It’s an exercise in persuasion. The targets of that persuasion are not the already persuaded but the as yet unpersuaded. It is their concerns that need to be understand, their questions answered, their values appealed to. Harry and Louise did not denounce Clintoncare as fascism. They explained how it would harm the people it purported to help, and they made their case in calm commonsense terms and tone. In today's debate, conservatives could show that a public option will invite private employers to end their coverage and dump their employees into the government plan. Americans are practical people, and they’ll respond to practical sense. Because Americans start with a bias in favor of free enterprise, they’ll respond especially well to sensible conservative arguments. But if we elevate everything to an immediate 11 on the Spinal Tap sound amplifier, we’ll lose, and not just elections, but the deepest values we are trying to defend via elections. In this year 2009, it often seems that liberals offer policies and conservatives offer emotions. True, the liberals offer bad policies and conservatives offer understandable or anyway pardonable emotions. Rick Santelli expressed something real and true in his famous CNBC outburst. But emotional outbursts need to be the rarity, not the routine, in politics. This problem-solving country does not trust people who cannot master their feelings in the service of their goals. Ask yourself this: who was angrier in 2008? Obama or McCain? Who was angrier in 2004, Bush or Kerry? Bush or Gore? Dole or Clinton? It’s almost a rule of American politics: in any important race, the angrier candidate nearly always loses. This is part three in a series/a>.  Read the other articles here<.