Saturday Disraeli-Blogging

Isaac Chotiner says David Brooks is wrong about Disraeli:

As for Disraeli, whose new conservative party was created out of opposition to free trade(!), his second premiership may indeed have led to the introduction of numerous social reforms. But voting was so restricted during that time--and the issues of the campaign so far removed from those of our own time--that to imply "the people" of the 1870's wanted incremental change from "conservative" politicians is almost absurd (Disraeli actually lost the popular vote in the crucial 1874 election). Disraeli's imperialism and nationalism are interesting to compare to Roosevelt's, but any comparison to modern-day America is downright silly.

This is perhaps a good time to note that I'm not really a fan of historical analogies as a mode of argument. The reason is that accuracy in historical characterization is rarely particularly relevant to the point the analogy-maker was trying to make. But under the circumstances, there's actually not much need to make the analogy. At the end of the day, I think I understand what Brooks is saying here perfectly well and I don't know anything about Disraeli. To me, the interesting thing about the use of the analogy is simply that for whatever reason modern-day conservative reformers don't like to site Eisenhower and Nixon as predecessors even though they would make more familiar references.

Comments

for whatever reason modern-day conservative reformers don't like to site Eisenhower and Nixon as predecessors even though they would make more familiar references.

Because Nixon is Nixon, and Eisenhower Republicans are now called "Democrats." As Bill Clinton reportedly suggested with regard to his first budget.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 19, 2008 1:36 PM

Matt,

Before he became involved in politics, Disraeli was a man who wrote several romance novels, had an "upper-class twit" accent, and liked to dress in expensive and fancy clothes. He is someone who, if alive today, David Brooks would chide as "elitist" and "out of touch" with the common man.

Posted by adlsad | July 19, 2008 1:55 PM

Re: for whatever reason modern-day conservative reformers don't like to site Eisenhower and Nixon as predecessors even though they would make more familiar references.

It's "cite" with a C, Mr. Yglesias.

I suppose the real reason that conservatives like to cite Disraeli and so forth- and why I like to cite a variety of sources from General Velasco to Joachim of Flora- is because we see no reason to pander to the deplorable modern habit of historical illiteracy. Just because too many people in modern West appear to believe Henry Ford's dictum that "History is one damn thing after another", and don't know St. Augustine from Nestorius, or Juan Manuel de Rosas from Dr. Francia, is no reason why we need to cater to their historical ignorance. History repeats itself, and history is full of lessons to teach us.

Posted by Hector | July 19, 2008 2:21 PM

If more Republicans sited...I mean, cited...Eisenhower as their inspiration, I think the world would be a better place.

Posted by Herb | July 19, 2008 2:30 PM

Nixon, I can understand not citing him given the historical allusions that spring to mind aren't opening China but Watergate. But Eisenhower is a great president with a substantively good record IMO that the Republicans today would not enact.

Posted by Rhoda | July 19, 2008 2:30 PM

Why the focus on Disraeli's second premiership? I thought the key time when Disraeli was the one bringing reform was the 1867 Reform Bill.

It should be noted, however, that the 1867 Reform Bill was basically the result of Disraeli trying to spite Gladstone, rather than any principled conservative position in favor of gradual change.

Posted by John | July 19, 2008 3:48 PM

I don't believe the conservatives took an anti-free trade - higher tariff position until after Disraeli was dead - around 1900.
Chotiner seems either unaware or disingenuous talking about social reforms. Disraeli is famous for throwing his weight behind the extension of the franchise in 1867, which was more extensive than the Liberal bill of 1866. Gladstone, by the way, opposed the more extensive franchise. So the voting restriction that Chotiner is talking about was lessened because of Disraeli. And it worked well enough that Disraeli's new voters and those anti-Irish voters alienated by Gladstone (think working class Southern whites going Republican) helped create a twenty year domination by the conservatives at the end of the century, headed by Salisbury and ending up with Balfour. Not a bad record electorally. Of course, these were all horrible, reactionary people who presided over terror famines in India which dwarfed Stalin's in the Ukraine and the decline of the British industrial infrastructure. As always, Conservatives at the top tend toward cronyism, mass murder, and racebaiting as a form of faux populism. They can't help themselves.

Posted by roger | July 19, 2008 4:03 PM

It could be Hector cites these high-toned sources because he is amazingly erudite or it could be he has a copy of Bartlett's nearby. Which is more likely?

Posted by dSmith | July 19, 2008 4:19 PM

As History shows, there's a cornucopia of evidence for whatever damn thing you want to find support for.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 19, 2008 5:06 PM

Yeah, like John said there was no principled position on gradual change. Disraeli was the ultimate cynic, his politics of populist nationalism, upon which someone may draw an analogy with the Bush years, were really predicated on the understanding that in the new era of the expanded suffrage and mass electoral politics, the elitist conservatives would be faced with extinction if they continued down the same path.

So Disraeli didn't offer gradual change on account of the electorate's taste for piecemeal change. He offered panem et circenses i.e. begrudging compromise domestically along with exportation of tensions abroad in the form of imperialism.

And to be fair, it didn't work that bad politics wise.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | July 19, 2008 6:11 PM

roger, the Tories started their anti-free trade positioning during the debates over the corn laws much much earlier - in the 1830's, if not sooner. It's good to think of the Liberals as the party of the bourgeoisie, the Conservatives as the party of the landed gentry, and the working classes as disenfranchised.

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