On our long ride north the other day, we happened across Amity Shlaes interviewing Dr. George Nash on C-SPAN’s After Words on Sirius radio. Nash is a conservative scholar and a biographer of Herbert Hoover. Shlaes is herself a conservative writer and columnist whose work has often been a lightning rod for criticism from the left. The topic was "The Crusade Years 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath," a manuscript that Nash discovered during his research for his 3-volume Hoover biography and subsequently edited for publication. Nash views Hoover as a progenitor of modern American conservatism. Shlaes was content to allow Nash to expound on Hoover’s views.
I was struck by a comment that Nash made in describing Hoover’s position on the government vis-á-vis business. Hoover, Nash said, “felt that the government should act as an umpire in business matters” and not undertake business activities itself. I have been thinking about that comment in light of the incessant talk of “free market solutions” that comes from the present-day Right. I imagine there is a reactionary segment of that choir that would like to see a return to a Nineteenth Century laissez-faire economic environment. However, it is the libertarian arguments of people like the Koch Brothers I find disingenuous at the core: When they advocate freedom from government regulation- say, in the form of the EPA- they are simply attempting to evade the economic cost of social responsibility for their business activities.
Beyond the desire to restrain government interference with the extraction of wealth from the society, there is patent intellectual hypocrisy in what I would call the “dichotomic dialectic” employed to rationalize conservative policy. If you buy into this argument, there is apparently almost no role for the government to play in the economy. We are told often that the government should not be in the position of “picking winners and losers” in business- the market will see to that. When you look around, however, you will see that statement belied by the actions of the very same people who make it. A few instances come immediately to mind:
- TARP and the Big Bailout of 2008-2009. To be balanced, there were many on the Right opposed to the government’s rescuing of the financial sector.
- Going back to the mid-20th Century, especially after World War II, the Federal government moved away from subsidizing the railroads and provided infrastructure (in the form of highways and airports) to the auto/trucking and airline industries. Winners and losers, would you not agree?
- Just last week, the independent automobile retailers in New Jersey were able to get the Christie administration to ban Tesla, the electric car company, from selling directly to consumers. There was no talk of allowing the marketplace to decide if consumers would prefer this business model. There were reports, on the other hand, of the amount of money the dealers’ association had contributed to Governor Bridgegate’s re-election campaign.
Rather than minimizing government’s role in business, today’s Republicans- and I realize that I am conflating “Republicans” with “conservatives”, but that is mainly how they self-identify these days- seemed bent on using the government as a tool of business. Stifling competition is just one of these tactics.
Observing the New Deal, Hoover was troubled by the government’s venturing into direct economic involvement. This was an era when paranoia about socialism and communism infected the thinking of the American business community. There were constant warnings from conservatives about collectivism and regimentation. While there may have be a reductionist taint to Hoover’s thinking, the basis of his positions were at least observable. It is possibly true that Hoover, given the tenor of the times, misunderstood the New Deal. I have always felt that FDR, a member of the wealthy elite, moved this country to a rather tepid (compared to the industrialized European countries) version of the social welfare state precisely as a means of outflanking the socialist and communist movements.
It is astounding to me how far modern American conservatism has moved from its roots. It should be the inevitable consequence of Hoover’s ideas that we have a conservative movement concerned with making the Federal government the most effective and efficient umpire possible.
Somewhere along the way, American conservatism took a wrong turn.
