Hart is a former speechwriter for both Nixon and Reagan, and until recently was a senior editor at The National Review. He calls Obama the “real conservative” in the campaign based on his position (and how he got there) on the war and democratization of the Middle East, on Social Security, on stem cell research, and on abortion. He argues that from his perspective on Edmund Burke.
There are common sense conservatives who are prudential, who try to match means with ends, and who calculate the probabilities of gains and risks. But there are philosophical (analytical) conservatives, the most useful being Edmund Burke, whose “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) understood the great dangers in trying to change society through abstract (republican) theory. My first book that dealt with these matters was “English Political writers: From Locke to Burke” (Knopf, 1963).
Hart’s argument is that, in each of the above cases, McCain (like Bush) is trying to effect change based on abstract theory without understanding the realities, the history, and the social facts surrounding each problem, whereas Obama seeks to understand all of those and lets them inform his position. On the War, for example:
Republican President George W. Bush has not been a conservative at all, either in domestic policy or in foreign policy. He invaded Iraq on the basis of abstract theory, the very thing Burke warned against. Bush aimed to turn Iraq into a democracy, “a beacon of liberty in the Middle East,” as he explained in a radio address in April 2006.
I do not recall any “conservative” publication mentioning those now memorable words “Sunni,” “Shia,” or “Kurds.” Burke would have been appalled at the blindness to history and to social facts that characterized the writing of those so-called conservatives.
Obama did understand. In his now famous 2002 speech, while he was still a state senator in Illinois, he said: “I know that a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, of undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without international support will fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I’m not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
Burke would have agreed entirely, and admired the cogency of so few words. And one thing I know is that both Nixon and Reagan would have agreed. Both were prudential and successful conservatives. But all the organs of the conservative movement followed Bush over the cliff—as did John McCain.
It’s an interesting twist, as Obama is usually painted as a starry-eyed idealist, when in Hart’s view he’s much more grounded and “common sense conservative” than his opponent. Which is why Hart is voting for Obama.