Mother Jones: The myth of conservative competence

Mother Jones

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--The myth of conservative competence persists as uncontested verity, allowing George Schultz to sigh in public relief, post–9/11, “Aren’t we lucky the adults are in charge?” and New York Times columnist David Brooks to froth recently, concerning the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, that “I love thee with the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach,” because Roberts was what the headline called “A Competent Conservative”—a “practitioner,” Brooks said, instead of a “theoretician,” “the sort of person who rises when a movement is mature and running things.”

Except that the opposite is true. The longer the conservatives have run things, the less mature—and more ideological, theoretical, and divorced from practicality—they have shown themselves to be. An unheralded ground shift of modern American governance is the great do-si-do of left and right in their devotion to core competence. The right has abandoned common sense in favor of ideologically driven utopianism, while governing liberals have become the get-it-done, incremental pragmatists. They have proved effective not only in forwarding such progressive pet causes as the environment and racial and gender equity; if you want to lower abortion rates, shore up the family, improve student performance, reduce violent crime, achieve energy independence, support small business, strengthen the economy, ratchet down the deficit and the flow of illegal drugs, as most conservatives say they do, you’ll have a hard time voting for the current crop of conservatives. They don’t know what they’re doing......


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