How The Leopard Changed His Spots

Gene Healy has a fascinating overview of the intellectual history of the conservative movement's embrace of presidential power over the years.

Comments

since the shift started in the 70's, it seems to me he could've linked that the rise of the religious right - a group already into worship and mythologizing of powerful authority figures.

Posted by cleek | July 6, 2007 8:46 AM

Shorter Gene Healy (1): Vote Republican? Who, free-market libertarians? No, it couldn't have been us. You must be thinking of some other group.

Sorry, I couldn't resist applying the "shorter" concept here.

Posted by Cyrus | July 6, 2007 9:22 AM

Or, you could do the short form- once the Drug Wars made it plain that the powers of the President would be used, not for integration, but to preserve segregation- "conservatives" became big fans of big government with big powers over the little guy.

Bill Buckley may have been intellectually honest in the 50s but most of his followers were just people who decided Eisenhower was a Communist agent when he sent the troops in to Little Rock.

Posted by serial catowner | July 6, 2007 10:34 AM

Healy credits Watergate for the transformation in conservative attitudes toward executive power, but I think it's more telling that the statistic he selects to illustrate the change in Congressional voting patterns dates to 1968. It was the rise of Nixon, not the fall of Nixon, that marks the rise of the Imperial Conservative President.

Nixon ran a heavy-handed, secretive White House that expanded the power of the President to harrass both domestic and overseas opposition. And he was rewarded with a 49-state landslide in which Northern conservative intellectuals got into bed with Southern reactionaries, militant nationalists, and moralizing evangelicals who all nursed various grudges toward the liberal establishment. That was the signal moment when the American conservative movement shifted from traditionalist opposition to big government toward a desire for powerful leaders to keep the Left in check by any means necessary.

Watergate, in which "the liberal establishment" brought down a powerful Republican President, just served to rile up a base that was already established.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 6, 2007 11:51 AM

There is simply nothing that they are not hypocritical about, and until the world comes to understand this we are doomed to repeat the same crap over and over.

Posted by Pat | July 6, 2007 1:20 PM

Just as the GOP changed its opinion on the proper role of Congress after the 2000 and 2006 elections, get ready for another overnight conversion about presidential power in 2008.

Posted by American Citizen | July 6, 2007 3:18 PM

And the Democrats used to be the party of slavery and federalism. Then they were the party of Mr. Bryan (and whatever the hell he was about).

I thought this was going to be about Leopard (which I have been playing with; I don't usually play with conservatives).

Posted by Linus | July 6, 2007 9:06 PM

Re: It was the rise of Nixon, not the fall of Nixon, that marks the rise of the Imperial Conservative President.

True, but Nixon was not exactly beloved of conservatives. The opening to China, withdrawl from Vietnam, wage and prices controls, proposals for universal healthcare and a guaranteed minimum income, he betrayed the Right on many of their most important issues.

Posted by JonF | July 7, 2007 11:59 PM