“We are Rockefeller Republicans,” declares Powerline

John Hinderaker of Powerline, who recently said that John McCain is a “great man,” has an article (in pdf), “Thoughts on the Legacy of Nelson Rockefeller,” in the newsletter of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences. In it, he argues that

[T]he highly partisan tone of political discourse today disguises the fact that the two major parties are as close together ideologically as they ever have been in American history. Far from being endangered, the political center is dominant….

The use of American military power abroad and the extent to which the federal government should control its citizens’ medical care are probably the most hotly disputed issues. But these issues do not involve fundamental philosophical differences….

In the years since Nelson Rockefeller retired from public life, there has been a convergence between the political parties and a general movement toward the center of the political spectrum. Republicans no longer are trying to undo the New Deal, and Democrats no longer dream of a socialist future.

Republicans are resigned to an expanding federal role in domestic affairs, and Democrats look for ways to help American business. If there is any one politician of his time whose legacy can be traced in the consensus politics of our time, it is Nelson Rockefeller.

If, as Hinderaker suggests, he and his fellow Powerline guys are Rockefeller Republicans, and if they believe that there are no significant differences between the parties, why then do they regard the Democrats as the devil incarnate and devote their lives to supporting and defending Republicans, no matter how left-leaning the Republicans become?

I was about to say, perhaps there is a split developing at Powerline between John on one side and Paul and Scott on the other. But that can’t be, because Paul posted an entry linking John’s article with this title:

WE ARE ALL ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICANS NOW

So, I don’t know how to make sense of this, except to say that the Powerline fellows, for all their frequently expressed gratitude to the Straussians and the neoconservatives as their formative intellectual influences, are simply not operating at a conceptual level. That is why they are unable to respond to any intellectual challenge to their positions. (For example, I recently wrote to Scott Johnson pointing out a contradiction in something he had written, and his response was to say that he was offended that I described him as a neocon. He didn’t respond to any of my substantive points.) What really moves them, as I’ve suggested before, is patriotism (which in their case comes down to adherence to democratic universalism), plus the desire to be connected to those in power. Hence their name, “Powerline.”

However we analyze their motivations and their self-understandings, we now understand the key to the Powerline writers: they have no principled opposition to the left, or, rather, to what they see as the moderate left. For them, the “left” and the “right” are but slight variations on the great Rockefellerian Center in which both “left” and “right” equally partake. That is why John, Paul, and Scott keep supporting Republican presidents, presidential candidates, and secretaries of state, no matter how far left they go. They are members of a team.

I’ve copied and reformatted the Hinderaker article below.

Thoughts on the Legacy of Nelson Rockefeller
by John H. Hinderaker

To many observers, the Republican Party’s geographical shift west and south and ideological shift toward conservatism over the past few decades have spelled the demise of the Rockefeller Republican. Today’s prominent Republicans, including those from the Northeast, like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, nearly universally portray themselves as heirs of Ronald Reagan, not Nelson Rockefeller. The conventional wisdom holds that the political defeat of the Rockefeller Republicans in the 1970s represented the defeat of the center—part of a process in which both parties came to be controlled by their more extreme wings.

But the highly partisan tone of political discourse today disguises the fact that the two major parties are as close together ideologically as they ever have been in American history. Far from being endangered, the political center is dominant. The relatively narrow gulf that currently separates the major parties is illustrated by the last two administrations. To anyone who lived through the 1950s and 1960s, it is remarkable to have observed a Democratic administration whose proudest achievements were low interest rates and a prolonged boom in the stock market. Meanwhile, we have witnessed a Republican administration and a Republican Congress that presided over unprecedented levels of federal spending and, with measures like No Child Left Behind, extended federal policy into areas that traditionally have been the province of the states.

There are, of course, areas of significant difference between the political parties and between those who call themselves conservatives and liberals. The use of American military power abroad and the extent to which the federal government should control its citizens’ medical care are probably the most hotly disputed issues. But these issues do not involve fundamental philosophical differences. Which is another way of saying that the center, and not any political or philosophical extremes, currently dominates American politics.

If that thesis is correct, the implications for Nelson Rockefeller’s legacy are considerable. In the 1960s, there were moderates and hard-liners on both sides of the political spectrum. With 40 years’ perspective, it is clear that on both sides, it was the moderates—the center-right and centerleft—who prevailed and shaped today’s political landscape. Far from being the leader of an extinct movement, Nelson Rockefeller left a rich legacy. His intellectual and political heirs are to be found in both political parties. If his influence is often overlooked, it is probably because the views for which he contended have passed into the national consensus and therefore are not part of our current political debate. In foreign policy, Rockefeller was an internationalist, although internationalism was by no means a universal perspective, either on the right or on the left, during his time.

Over much of our history, isolationism has been espoused by many political leaders and has been the de facto position of one or the other of our parties. Today, internationalism is the common assumption of the leadership of both parties. The parties tend to differ on the weight given to various tools of foreign policy, but no mainstream figure in either party questions the need to be fully engaged abroad. In domestic policy, Rockefeller’s most fundamental difference from his conservative rivals was his more expansive view of the role of government and his willingness to spend money and, if necessary, raise taxes. As governor of New York, he oversaw a public works boom and expanded welfare programs. At the same time, he was strongly pro-business, which the liberals of his time were not. The Rockefeller Republicans were generally viewed not as hostile to the Democrats’ government programs, but as committed to executing them more efficiently and more effectively than the liberals were willing or able to do. Nelson Rockefeller also was a leading proponent of environmental conservation. He oversaw creation of New York’s Adirondack Park Agency, an early instance of mixed-use conservation with both public and private components.

Again, Rockefeller’s environmental policies (which were not, of course, unique to him) comprise an important part of today’s bipartisan consensus. In the years since Nelson Rockefeller retired from public life, there has been a convergence between the political parties and a general movement toward the center of the political spectrum. Republicans no longer are trying to undo the New Deal, and Democrats no longer dream of a socialist future.

Republicans are resigned to an expanding federal role in domestic affairs, and Democrats look for ways to help American business. If there is any one politician of his time whose legacy can be traced in the consensus politics of our time, it is Nelson Rockefeller.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 31, 2008 09:30 PM | Send