Dear Reader (even those of you forming bizarre political friendships),
As a conservative, the best case I can make for Kamala Harris is she’s a fraud.
That sounds harsh. Let me rephrase: I could make a good case for Harris if she were a fraud—and I hope she is.
This is kind of hard to explain because I have so little experience making this argument. So bear with me, and maybe cut me some slack if I mess up a little along the way.
Growing up in Reagan-Buckley conservatism, I was always a believer in conviction-politicians, people who state their beliefs forthrightly and fight for them come hell or high water. There’s a reason Bill Rusher’s warning to young National Review writers—“Politicians will always disappoint you”—became almost a mantra for some of us. Rusher didn’t mean it as some sweeping condemnation of politicians as a class. His point was simply that idealists, firebrands, and intellectuals who write about their principles for a living at places like National Review are under little or no pressure to compromise with political reality the way people who run for public office have to.
Reagan is remembered today, by those of us who loved him, as a passionate and principled conservative who stuck to his guns and offered a clear, undiluted, optimistic, vision of America. All of that is true to one extent or another when he is graded as a politician. But it’s worth remembering that when he was actually in office, a lot of conservatives had a more nuanced view. Here’s a New York Times headline from June 26, 1983: “CONSERVATIVES DISAPPOINTED WITH ‘SHIFT’BY REAGAN.”
The article begins:
Ideological conservatives, who provided the core of Ronald Reagan’s support in 1980, have been deeply disappointed with his performance as President, especially what they regard as his growing moderation in advance of the 1984 campaign.
The conservatives said in interviews this week that they agreed with most of Mr. Reagan’s goals but felt he had been too timid in fighting for them. As an example, they noted that he was no longer pressing Congress to abolish the Department of Education.
It goes on to quote one prominent conservative after another expressing disappointment and dismay with the Gipper’s inability or unwillingness to execute parts of his agenda. This was during the height of the “Let Reagan be Reagan” era. (For the record, I was in junior high school then.) M. Stanton Evans told the Times that Reagan was “ill-served by some members of his staff who do not seem to share his commitment to the conservative program on which he ran.” I think that was true in some instances, and a little unfair in others. Reagan was a politician—a very good one—and politicians are constrained in what they can accomplish, and when they can accomplish it.
Bill Clinton was the kind of politician I once detested. He admitted that he smoked pot, but didn’t inhale. He said he agreed with the arguments of those who opposed the first Iraq War, but would have voted with the supporters. Whenever he came to a fork in the road, he took it, as Yogi Berra might say.
This was the guy who took time off from the campaign trail to oversee the execution of a man so mentally impaired he asked the guards escorting him to the death chamber to save his slice of pecan pie from his last meal so he could eat it later.
Jesse Jackson once said of Clinton, “I can maybe work with him but I know now who he is, what he is. There is nothing this man won’t do. He is immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing and get really down in there in him, you find absolutely nothing … nothing but an appetite.” That was probably a little unfair to Clinton, but it did point to what made him so infuriating to conservatives. His political character seemed a reflection of his personal character—or lack thereof. Indeed, my opposition to both Clinton and Trump is perfectly consistent: Character matters. The people who said Bill Clinton’s character mattered were right, and so are the people who say Trump’s character matters. The fact that the teams saying character matters have switched sides is annoying but immaterial as far as I am concerned.
Federal agencies just got a wakeup call.
But one of the reasons I’ve softened, somewhat, on Clinton is that there was a benefit to his lack of conviction. Clinton’s political gift—and he was an extremely gifted politician—was to figure out where the median voter was and tell him or her whatever they wanted to hear.
Sure, he was an Olympian flip-flopper, a chameleon, an appetite in a suit. But he used that skill to do things that were broadly popular and geared toward a positive historical legacy. I certainly don’t agree with all his policies, but he triangulated and Sister Souljah’d his way to running a budget surplus, expanding NATO (a good thing in my book), reforming welfare, signing a (considerably overhyped) crime bill, signing NAFTA (another good thing), and not getting in the way of roaring economy. Now, before you take away my right-wing decoder ring, I’m the first to admit that he was forced to do many of these things by Republicans and conservatives against his preferences. They’re the ones who forced him to declare (falsely, alas), “The era of big government is over.” He screwed over the ideological base of his party constantly because it was good for him to do so.
In an era when we think the president should be a culture-war avatar, a purist who serves as the id of the ideological base made flesh, it’s no surprise people hate flip-floppers. But here’s the thing: You should always welcome it when a politician flip-flops to your position, regardless of what it says about the politician. Indeed, the job of serious activists and ideologues should be to create the circumstances in which politicians switch positions to your position. Obviously, it would speak better of them as a person if the conversion is sincere and in good faith. But, no Israel supporter should care that much if John Fetterman is being cynical by supporting Israel wholeheartedly. (I don’t think he is, but you get the point.) Pro-lifers should cheer when pro-choicers switch sides. If Bernie Sanders declared tomorrow that he now favors Social Security reform and freer trade, it would be insanity for free-market conservatives to denounce him. Take the win.
Which brings me to Kamala Harris. Obviously, she’s way too left-wing for me. But I sincerely hope that her left-wingness is the product of Clintonian ambition and not sincere conviction.
In other words, I hope she’s prepared to be the Mother of All Flip Floppers.
I want her to cut an ad where she looks straight into the camera and says, “That stuff I said about getting rid of cows? Screw that noise,” and then take a bite of a giant cheeseburger.
“Medicare for All? That sounded like a great idea. But I now realize we can’t afford it and there are better and more affordable approaches within the current system.”
“‘Defund the police?’ Are you high? I’ve seen what a lack of policing does to the most vulnerable. I want to provide whatever resources the police need to do their jobs the right way.”
When asked about her immigration position, she should come up with an entirely new one: “Pathway to citizenship for anybody who crosses the border illegally? That’s bonkers. I learned from my work on this issue that we cannot be a magnet for an endless flow of migrants, no matter how much I sympathize with their plight. We are a nation of laws.”
I want her to do this because I think these are the right positions. But it shouldn’t be lost on anybody that it would be smart for her to do this politically. If she runs as the Kamala Harris of the 2020 primaries, she will get crushed.
This gets to the benefit of flip-floppers: They do what is popular. And what is popular in MSNBC green rooms and New York Times editorial boardrooms is unpopular in America. The median American voter—heck the median Democratic voter—is to the right of the people most excited by her candidacy. She should use that popularity, and that hunger to defeat Trump, to leverage support from Americans who aren’t enthusiastic or hopeful about her.
Is she capable of doing this? I have my doubts, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
Kamala Harris rose through the ranks of San Francisco politics. As Jeane Kirkpatrick noted long ago, San Francisco Democrats are the worst. In nerd terms, San Francisco is the Salusa Secundus of lefty lunacy, breeding all manner of pacifist-warrior castes of smug progressives, trustafarian radicals, and hippies in open-toed shoes with closed minds. Outside of San Francisco, California is marginally better, but it’s still effectively a one-party state. As a result, it produces politicians who speak progressivism as their first language. Worse, years of powerlessness have produced a state GOP that serves as little more than a foil or punchline for Democrats.
In short, early 21st century California ain’t late 20th century Arkansas, and Harris ain’t no Bill Clinton, alas. But it’s worth noting that Harris wasn’t a “George Soros prosecutor.” Those came later.
When Harris was California’s district attorney she called herself “California’s top cop.” In her 2010 book, Smart on Crime, she wrote, “If we take a show of hands of those who would like to see more police officers on the street, mine would shoot up. A more visible and strategic police presence is a deterrent to crime, and it has a positive impact on a community.” As district attorney in San Francisco, citing her promise to oppose the death penalty, she refused to seek it for a cop killer, infuriating the police. But when the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, she appealed the decision, saying it didn’t follow the law. In 2004 she opposed easing mandatory minimum sentences, infuriating the social justice left.
Now, all that changed when she became senator. The national Democratic Party lurched leftward and she lurched with it. She then ran for president in the middle of the Black Lives Matter frenzy, and the last thing she could do was run on a tough-on-crime record (a record that had admittedly been partially muddied by her time as a senator).
But she has a short window of opportunity to redefine herself. I understand why, in her debut speech, at Biden’s former campaign headquarters, she leaned into the “Prosecutor vs. the Felon” line. She needed to reassure and fire up both her campaign and Democrats not yet sold on her. But that line is not what Trump-Biden voters want to hear. They’re much more skeptical (wrongly in my opinion) of the criminal cases against Trump. Others may not be skeptical, they just don’t care very much. Immigration and crime are good issues for Trump and they were terrible ones for Biden. She has a chance—just a chance—to claw back people who care about that stuff. And the way to do that is to throw the MSNBC left under the bus so hard that being run over by a bus is a secondary concern.
I don’t mean she should openly relish it or even admit that’s what she’s doing. Show, don’t tell. Let the left complain. That buys support and trust from the middle. Brag about how we’re producing more oil and gas than ever and talk about how that’s good for the economy. Let Trump flail in response. Show actual leadership.
Thanks to ideological polarization, leadership has been redefined as a kind of pandering followership: There go my people, I must go with them for I am their leader.
Earning criticism or attacks from your political opponents is easy; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene do that every day. Standing up to your fans and telling them that they can get partial victories with you, or total defeat from your opponent, is what actual leadership looks like.
That’s what I mean when I say I hope she’s a fraud. I want her to be a fraudulent ideologue and reveal that she’s an authentic politician. I want her to listen to voters who think the left is too statist, too obsessed with identity politics, too un-American, and say, “I hear you” and move toward them. It would be smart for her to do it, and it would be good for America.
One last point: I know I am going to get a lot of grief from some on the right for giving a Democrat, never mind this Democrat, advice about how to win. Fair enough, I am being a little hypocritical on this point in that I’ve written a lot about how it’s not my job to give advice to politicians. But my aim here isn’t to be a political consultant for Kamala Harris. It’s to point out—again!—that we have a structural problem in our political system.
We don’t have enough good politicians who think their job is to do what’s right for the country rather than what’s most satisfying for their party and their media cheerleaders. This dysfunction has been good at times for Republicans, but bad for conservatism. It is not good for conservatism to have one of the two major parties be so leftwing. Why? For starters, because it will win sometimes. But more importantly, this polarization has moved the center of gravity in American politics leftward over the last two decades. A Democratic Party that moved rightward would move the center of gravity rightward. That’s what Bill Clinton did for a time in the 1990s. That wasn’t his goal or desire—it was merely necessary for him to win. And, if Harris flip-flops like a mackerel on the pier, but in a rightward direction, I would welcome it.
Canine Update: Everything in quadruped land is going well, except that twice this week I had to go to CNN very early in the AM to do “CNN This Morning” and that meant leaving pre-morning walk. Zoë continues to believe this is an outrageous breach of all decorum and protocol. On Monday, she chastised me vigorously upon my return (Warning: Strong Aroo Content). They ended up forgiving me. And yesterday, Zoë even woke up Pippa to lobby for a pre-departure walk.
On Tuesday, Z&P had a brief conversation with some sort of doodle. Pippa continues to have a grand time with her best friend, Clover, on the midday walks. Clover is a Boykin and until recently didn’t smile much. But now she smiles all the time, including for an excellent group shot of the small dog posse, which was immediately turned into an album cover. Zoë was providing security out of the frame, but she has come to be a very sweet protector of the whole pack, and very tolerant of Clover, who tends to talk ill-advised smack in the car. Zoë has mellowed so much in her old age, though the neighborhood rabbits have different opinions.
Oh, and folks should know that executive editor Declan Garvey has a new Boykin puppy, Penny. She’s a doll. And if he gives me permission, I’ll share pictures. Chester is doing fine and we are still appeasing him. But we have a zero-tolerance policy about him being in the backyard because that’s where he bullies Gracie. The other day we heard an intense low meoowwrr and it was coming from Grace, who was hiding under the table. TFJ ran out with the dogs in tow and scared him away. Pippa continues to play hard and nap hard. And everyone gets their treats.
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