Despite the glow of his approval ratings, this will prove a tough challenge. The old conservative coalition has frayed. The issues that kept conservatives in power around the Western world over the past few decades–Soviet communism, sky-high taxes, student radicalism–have largely disappeared. (This is the downside of winning political battles.) That’s why in every European country except Spain the right has imploded and a left-of-center party is in power.
George W. Bush’s political skill has been to appear to be a centrist and yet appeal to traditional Republicans through tax cuts and a few select moves on social policy. But as important, he has reached out to a large new group of voters–call them soft evangelicals. They don’t identify themselves as part of the religious right, don’t even consider themselves Republicans and don’t vote on the usual hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality.
They are middle-class, college-educated parents, live in the outer suburbs, are religious and probably own a gun. They worry about their kids growing up in a crass culture, were offended by Bill Clinton’s scandals and think the country is on the wrong moral track. Of the 42 percent of Americans who attend religious services weekly, 63 percent voted for Bush in November.
Bush appealed to this group through his advocacy of educational standards, school vouchers and faith-based initiatives, and most of all because he seemed a decent man who would “restore the dignity of the office.”
There is another great swath of voters in the country, however: the “soft environmentalists.” They are well-to-do, urban and suburban postgraduates who do not own guns and who go to jazz brunches instead of church on Sundays. They worry about the gun culture, anti-abortion groups and, above all, the environment. Of the 46 percent of the country who believe that the environment is more important than economic growth, 59 percent voted for Al Gore.
In the age of muddled consensus, the two groups straddle the political center and voters move between them. Both respond to the central force of our times: turbocharged capitalism. The conservationists worry that it soils our natural environment, the conservatives that it soils our moral environment.
Some Democrats are betting that the environmentalists represent the future. They are, after all, in Democrat Al From’s words, “educated, diverse, suburban, ‘wired’ and ‘moderate’,” and therefore will be the “dominant voters of the Information Age.” To say this is to bet, in effect, that the United States is going to become more and more like every other industrialized country in the world: secular, postpatriotic, postreligious and uneasy with vast income inequalities.
But people have been making that bet for 200 years, and it hasn’t yet paid off. It’s more likely that, compared with other industrialized nations, the United States will remain, in political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset’s words, “the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented and individualistic.”
That means that both the soft evangelicals and the soft environmentalists are here to stay. And any lasting political coalition must have some appeal to both groups. Few Republicans can win over the conservationists on environmental issues, but Bush could appeal to this group with other policies.
Poll after poll shows that these voters are most supportive of changes in Social Security, Medicare and public schools. Affluent Information Age workers want to manage their own pensions, understand that the market can help reduce health-care costs and distrust monopolies in education. Once Bush gets his tax cut he should push hard for innovation in all these areas. It would be good policy but also good politics.
In fact, if the Republicans can become the party that modernized the welfare state, it will send a powerful message to conservatives not just in America but abroad. Until now Bush’s agenda–tax cuts, a strong military and “remoralization”–has made no impact on foreigners, even well-wishers on the right. But with their welfare states in fiscal crisis, restructuring pensions, health care and education is high on every European country’s agenda.
For Bush, tackling these issues will require spending political capital. But, as Napoleon said, “he who fears losing his reputation is sure to lose it.” Of course, on his 100th day Napoleon got crushed at Waterloo. Maybe he moved too fast. Thankfully Bush has more time.
