So I read Mark Levin's post about the "recklessness and abandonment of rationality" that has led to the likelihood of an Obama victory. Levin's description of the state of the race and Obama himself is at odds with what is actually happening out in the world. Consider this statement: "Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue." This for the liberal who's platform is tax cuts for 95 percent of people, who is likely to put Republicans in high Cabinet positions, who is still mistrusted by plenty of folks who are ideologues on the left.
Nowhere in the post does he consider that maybe the message of conservatism he promotes might be, um, part of the problem. Certainly there are plenty of conservative writers, from Andrew Sullivan to the young guns (Culture 11, Reihan + Ross) who have evinced plenty of introspection about how conservatism needs to adapt to these changing times. But there are also plenty of more influential conservative writers who are taking, like Levin, the position that everyone else is crazy.
It's notable because people on the left, especially during the dark days of the early oughts, and, historically, in the eighties with the New Democrats, have shown a willingness to say, "Whoa, something isn't working here." Sometimes that took the form of saying that liberals need to be more pragmatic, more conservative, etc., and sometimes it took the form of people calling for a return to and revitalization of core progressive principles. Obama certainly has borrowed from both of these exercises in redefinition: He's pragmatic in many respects, shading toward conservative in his understanding of family and faith, but also has made forthright defenses of liberal ideas on civil rights and investment.
But I, for one, would like to see a better conservative opposition, if only because I'd rather spend my days arguing about policy than trying to convince readers that liberal political candidates aren't terrorist sympathizers. Maybe this is simply a symptom of the final days of a long and strange election, but it often feels like conservatives and liberals are talking past each other; not in the usual way, where fundamental differences in values make our various proposals incompatible, but because there are conservatives who are focusing on Obama's imaginary "utopianism" while so many liberals are focused on asking why we're in Iraq or what will be done about the economy. It's certainly a metaphor for the campaign, where Obama's bread-and-butter approach has seen a success while McCain's character-driven campaign has thus far failed to resonate.
--Tim Fernholz
