By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Not long ago, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic
became clear, journalists were quick to say that the crisis marked the end of
an era. “The Trump Presidency is Over,” declared a headline in The Atlantic.
One article in Politico said, “The Pandemic Is the End of Trumpism.” A New
York Times op-ed column carried the headline, “The Era of Small Government
Is Over.”
Well, yes. At least so far as that last article is concerned.
The era of small government has been over for decades (if it ever happened at
all). The highpoint of Republican and conservative efforts to limit the size
and scope of the federal Leviathan was either Ronald Reagan’s 1982 budget or
the Clinton–Gingrich welfare reform of 1996. Then the GOP abandoned its plans
for minimal government.
Even the Tea Party insurgency — which began as a
rebellion against standpatters in the Republican establishment — protested cuts
to Medicare and achieved little more than a sequester that severely damaged
military readiness. And, of course, the current Republican president was
elected on a pledge not to touch senior health care and retirement benefits. No
small-government conservative, he.
What the moment requires is some intellectual modesty. It
is far too early in the development of this national emergency to make
definitive judgments on its political, economic, social, and cultural effects.
We might as well explore alternative scenarios. For example: The coronavirus might
not signify a conclusion to or beginning of a historical era, so much as an
acceleration of previously germinating inclinations.
This quickening is most visible in the United States
Senate. It was the youthful and heterodox members of the Republican conference
who first recognized the severity of the challenges emanating from Wuhan,
China. As Congress put together its economic-relief bill, these lawmakers did
not worry about violating free-market dogma. They recognized the extraordinary
nature of the situation. Their primary concern was the fate of the unemployed.
In so far as “Trumpism,” to the degree that it exists, describes a political
tendency that is suspicious of overseas commitments, international trade, and
unchecked immigration, and more worried about the rise of China than the
revanchism of Russia, this pandemic does not spell the “end.” It may even serve
as vindication.
The Republican senators most widely seen as preparing to
run for president in 2024 have used the past few weeks to articulate a
conservatism that is more heavily weighted toward security than freedom. Tom
Cotton has a bill, cosponsored by Mike Gallagher in the House, to end U.S.
dependence on the Chinese manufacture of pharmaceuticals. Josh Hawley
introduced an “Emergency Family Relief Act” that was much more ambitious than
the (for now) onetime payments included in the economic triage bill. Marco
Rubio designed the small-business lending component that is essential to the
CARES Act. They all criticized the Chinese government for lying about the
coronavirus as it spread throughout the world.
On Capitol Hill, then, the virus has elevated the
senators and staffers who have spent the last few years calling for a
“realignment” of Republican politics away from the prerogatives and priorities
of corporate America and toward those of middle- and working-class families
without college degrees. The China hawks, economic nationalists, and advocates
of industrial policy have found themselves playing the role of Cassandra, who
saw the cost of war firsthand after her warnings were dismissed.
The young people on the right drawn to the agenda of
national populism will come out of this experience more skeptical of China,
more critical of the pre-crisis economic policy of the GOP, more suspicious of
uncontrolled flows of labor, capital, and goods across borders. They may find
that they have company, since the number of unemployed and nonparticipants in
the labor force is about to swell.
If the results of the disease and recession are
widespread and long-lasting, expect the new acolytes of realignment to adopt
Tyler Cowen’s formulation of “state-capacity libertarianism” as a possible
model for reconciling markets with a state strong enough to boost
infrastructure, education, and research and development. The lack of capacity
in the public-health system and in the domestic manufacture of pharmaceuticals
and personal protective equipment is a tragic reminder of the consequences of
drift. Recent days have provided empirical proof of the aphorism that
capitalism is, in the end, a government program.
A traditionalist right that understands the United States
is in a full-spectrum competition with China, that uses public policy to
strengthen working families in both the service and manufacturing sectors, and
that observes and promotes American traditions of constitutional liberty would
not be the worst upshot of this calamity. But it is just one conceivable
outcome. And by no means the most likely.
The debate over conservative economic policy is just
that, a debate, and the pro-market and supply-side constituencies, while no
longer fashionable in certain corners of the Internet, have lost none of their
vigor, none of their intellectual ability, none of their institutional power.
The mounting pressure from some on the right to restore economic normalcy as
soon as possible testifies not only to the un-sustainability of lockdowns over
time, but also to the potency of the status quo ante coronavirus.
After all, the law of unintended consequences stipulates
that for every action there is an equal and unplanned and (probably) negative
reaction. The cascading collapses of demand, liquidity, and solvency may soon
put us in a world more unstable than the creaky one we already inhabit. And if
past is prologue, the monetary and fiscal expansion that authorities have used
to stave off doomsday will look very different to conservatives out of power.
One year from now, the American political scene could well resemble that of a
decade ago, when a unified Democratic government was under siege from Red State
outsiders who had rekindled opposition to deficit spending.
If that happens, then anyone connected to the coronavirus
response will be exposed to intra-party challenges. And Nikki Haley, who
defended capitalism with aplomb in the Wall Street Journal, and resigned
from the board of Boeing after the company requested a federal bailout, will
benefit from an anti-statist turn on the grassroots right. In the long run,
then, coronavirus may end up reinvigorating both the nationalist and
free-market camps.
But you know what else happens in the long run. For the
time being, coronavirus has accelerated a generational and ideological
transition within American conservatism toward the politics of social
conservatism, foreign-policy unilateralism, and economic solidarity.
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