Thom Hartmann: Sam Tanenhaus is with us. Sam is the author of a new book "The Death of Conservatism". He’s also the editor of the New York Times Book Review, and "Week in Review", prize-winning biographer Whittaker Chambers, presently writing a biography of William F. Buckley. That must be fascinating, Sam. Welcome to the show.
Sam Tanenhaus: Well, it's good to be here. Yes, Buckley is a fascinating and complicated and quite of wonderful creature in his way and I learned a lot from him.
Thom Hartmann: I was a big fan of “Firing Line” and I wrote a book, geez, fifteen years ago or so, for which I interviewed him briefly and I quoted him in the book, oddly enough, about Attention Deficit Disorder, and his own use of Ritalin, and his own… I’m sure you’re read his autobiography, “Overdrive”.
Sam Tanenhaus: Oh sure. Well, that must have been an interesting interview. Gosh.
Thom Hartmann: “Overdrive” is the… if you look up Adult ADHD in the dictionary, it should say “read “Overdrive” by William F. Buckley”.
Sam Tanenhaus: Absolutely right. He’s pretty open about it too.
Thom Hartmann: Yes. He was not making any secret of it which I why he allowed me to quote him in my book. In any case, “The Death of Conservatism”, your new book, I find fascinating. Here, I mean you go all the way back to Burke, Sir Edmund Burke, who although I didn’t see his most famous quote in your book, or maybe I just missed it, that he was opposed to people voting if they were not, well, there was a big argument in America about whether or not they were landowners. He felt that they should be landowners and rich. He said “It does me no harm if” and I’m paraphrasing from memory here but, “It does me no harm if a man is allowed to participate in a servile profession such as hairdresser or tallow-maker (candle-maker) but it does society considerable violence if such a man is allowed to consider to participate in the decisions of governance.”
Sam Tanenhaus: Well, you know, you have to take people in the context of their times, and remember that it was also Burke who objected to the American colonists having seats in Parliament because they were slave owners back then.
Thom Hartmann: Yes.
Sam Tanenhaus: So the world was a different place back, no question about it.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Absolutely. And Conservative and Liberal meant different things back then. George Washington aggressively and openly called himself a Liberal, although I’d say he was probably more of a modern-day Liberal. You refer to Gary Hart in your book as a Neo-Liberal. I spent a week with Gary Hart on a cruise last year and found him to be a fascinating guy. Why Neo-Liberal?
Sam Tanenhaus: Because he was one of the first wave of Democrats who, back in the 1980’s, saw the party was just exiled from power, had become what in the book what I describe as the moon party, I mean was orbiting outside the mainstream of politics. How to get back in. Well, one way to do it was to look hard at where the party and where certain Liberal ideas had lead them. Honorable ideas, but maybe that weren’t so much in touch with the center of the modern voting population, and re-think them. Which is exactly what Conservatives need to do today. They’ve become the moon party.
Thom Hartmann: Yes. They absolutely have.
Sam Tanenhaus: Yes, and they’re kind of outside. Look at the big issues of the day. The stimulus, and healthcare. Those are our two big domestic issues. It’s not so much that Republicans object to them. I mean, it’s part of their role, it’s to form an opposition. It’s that they’ve vacated the field.
Thom Hartmann: Well, and Sam, within eighteen months, it’s going to become CAP and trade, and immigration as well. It’s going to keep on moving, but you know, I’d say that Gary Hart was a Neo-Liberal because he embraced internationalism. He embraced his CAFTA / NAFTA / WTO.
Sam Tanenhaus: He also, you know, he was a brilliant guy. I think Gary Hart was one of the real tragedies of modern American politics.
Thom Hartmann: Yes.
Sam Tanenhaus: It was brought on by himself. He was extraordinary brilliant.
Thom Hartmann: And still is.
Sam Tanenhaus: He still is. In fact, he writes for me at the Book Review. He reviews very serious books for us. He really had a sense to, absolutely right, of the global dimension of politics. Also the military. He was the one who wanted us to reconfigure our military. Make it a lot cheaper, make it more efficient.
Thom Hartmann: I agree. Here’s my concern. And we’re talking to Sam Tanenhaus, his new book “The Death of Conservatism”, and we only have a minute and a half or so here, Sam, I’m sorry. nytimes.com.
My concern is that the Conservatives, the people who call themselves Conservatives, are not taking classical Conservative positions. And if you’re writing a biography of William F. Buckley you know what I’m talking about. And the Liberals who call themselves Liberal, with a few exceptions, people like Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold, and the late Ted Kennedy, are not taking true Liberal positions. Everybody is dancing to the tune of the big corporations who have seized the political discourse in this country. What do we do about that?
Sam Tanenhaus: Well, that’s a great question, you know. One of the interesting things about the true origins of Conservatism, not so much the Burke era, but the nineteenth century, was that it was the fear of the corporations.
Thom Hartmann: I know. But it was the senior Liberals too.
Sam Tanenhaus: Absolutely. Well, and the idea was that if you were going to keep society together, make people responsible for one another, you can’t let the guys who are really after the big bucks all the time call the shots.
Thom Hartmann: Right, so in 30 seconds, what do we do? Bring back Teddy Roosevelt?
Sam Tanenhaus: Well, one thing we do is to regulate, which we’re beginning to do. Listen, you’re never going to drive it out. That’s partly what America is about, entrepreneurial spirit and all the rest. But, you have to regulate it really, really closely. And you can’t treat the marketplace as if it is a theological end in and of itself. Which is what the right has done for a long time now.
Thom Hartmann: Tragically, they’ve elevated this so-called free market, which obviously doesn’t exist. The market doesn’t exist until the government establishes the rules. Just like a football game doesn’t exist without a football field and referee.
Sam Tanenhaus: That’s absolutely right. Absolutely right.
Thom Hartmann: “The Death of Conservatism”. A very thought-provoking book, by Sam Tanenhaus. Sam, thanks for dropping by today.
Sam Tanenhaus: My pleasure.
Thom Hartmann: Great talking with you, and keep up the great work.
Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.
