The eternal return of conservative populism

J.D. Vance's populist schtick is nothing new

Back in October of 1999, a now-obscure writer named Joseph Jacobs published a book titled “The Compassionate Conservative: Assuming Responsibility and Respecting Human Dignity.” The book scored a blurb from Texas’ then-governor George W. Bush, who began using the label himself and surprised observers by accusing House Republicans of wanting to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor.”

As an effort to moderate the GOP’s image, this worked.

It increased Bush’s appeal to swing voters vis-a-vis Al Gore, but it also hurt Gore on the left, where he was challenged by Ralph Nader. Nader charged that Bush and Gore were “tweedledee and tweedledum” since Gore was a moderate pro-business Democrat and Bush was a moderate, compassionate conservative. And the new look on the right carried through into Bush’s administration. He increased federal involvement in K-12 education via the No Child Left Behind law. He made SNAP benefits easier to access. He imposed tariffs on imported steel. Rather than cutting Medicare benefits, he proposed increasing federal spending on Medicare to cover prescription drug costs. These moves generated a lot of discourse, much of it criticism from traditional Reaganite and libertarian conservatives who felt Bush had abandoned the true path of small government politics. While his fans called it “compassionate conservatism,” his detractors on the right called it “big government conservatism.”

I’m reminded of this when I see the fascination of some on the left with figures like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance, who meld right-wing cultural politics with an economic message that signals a break with free market fundamentalism. The standard Democratic Party line on these guys, and especially Vance now that he’s been elevated to the national ticket, is that they’re frauds.

My take is more that the novelty of all their approach is just massively overstated.

Obviously Vance is not exactly like Bush. And for that matter, Vance is not exactly like Hawley. But there just aren’t that many “big ideas” out there in politics, and “what if we emphasized cultural conservatism while strategically breaking with free market orthodoxy” is one of the most tried-and-true political ideas in the universe. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad idea. But the most important question is what breaks do you make and are they smart ones that actually work? The big ideas mad libs themselves just aren’t that significant.

All this has happened before…

This is also true on the left, where I feel like we are perennially reinventing the concept of embracing the power of markets while adhering to egalitarian values. There’s a lot of interest in Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s forthcoming book on “abundance,” which they hope to make the centerpiece of a new moderate Democrat economic agenda. And there’s a conservative version of this in almost the opposite of the Vance corner of the board, exemplified by James Pethokoukis’ recent book “The Conservative Futurist.” That book, which rejects MAGA nostalgia economics, posits that the most important divide in contemporary American politics is not between right-wing and left-wing but between pro-growth “up-wing” optimists and “down-wing” doomers.

I like Ezra and Derek, and I like Pethokoukis’ book.