The Conservative Movement
What Color For Its Tent? ¹

Mitchell B. Pearlstein, Ph.D.
President, Center of the American Experiment

May 5, 1998

Starting in the spring of 1988, while still serving in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, I began announcing to just about everyone I either knew or had just met, either in DC or around the country, that I planned to eventually return to Minnesota and start a conservative think tank. To which the modal response was: You want to start a what, where?

A Minnesota chauvinist though I might have been, this reaction did not offend me, as I, too, knew my state's not wholly unjustified reputation. But at the same time I was convinced of three other things.

First, that Minnesota is a much more complex state than easy stereotype and legend have it. (I might note that exquisite validation of this political fact of life is currently seen in that oddest of all odd couples -- Rod Grams and Paul Wellstone -- that Minnesota voters, in their infinite if off-beat wisdom, have chosen to send to the United States Senate.)

Second, that there existed a critical mass of people in Minnesota who would be interested in reading the kind of writers and hearing the kind speakers that I was interested in.

And third, I was convinced -- precisely because so many people assumed that a conservative and free-market policy institute in Minnesota constituted a geopolitical contradiction in terms -- that there existed an opportunity and a niche for such a venture wider than the prairie itself.

It is now more than a decade since what was to become Center of the American Experiment was but a gleam in my right eye and more than eight years since we opened shop in downtown Minneapolis. Given the subject at hand -- strengthening freedom and civil society -- I would extract the following four points from our experience.

(I) Extraordinary Variety

For all the big talk in conservative circles about the brilliance of federalism and the uniqueness of each of America's 50 states and thousands of communities, I would suggest, with all due respect, that activists like us, when considering ultimate destinations and methods for the conservative movement, have a tendency to prescribe without nearly enough appreciation for the extraordinary variety of our country and countrymen.

By saying this, I hasten to add, I am not making a liberally orthodox multicultural pitch. Rather, I am referring to the need to better recognize that not all ideas, not all emphases -- not all tones -- work equally well all across the United States.

I would like to think that I have a practiced, and by now, instinctive feel for what might fly in Minnesota, not only when it comes to policies, but also to rhetoric. In this spirit, it's easy for me to imagine certain speakers we all know and love doing boffo in Phoenix or Boise but having just too succulent a red-meat quotient to be received as well in Minneapolis or St. Paul. This has particular pertinence for American Experiment insofar as we've always been more interested in persuading middle of the roaders to come aboard than in rallying the already faithful.

Yet having said that (not that it contradicts anything I've already said), one must acknowledge that Minnesota has actually led the way in one area of prime interest to conservatives: school choice. Despite our left-wing reputation, despite the presumed power of our two teacher unions, and despite the fact that our kids perform comparatively well academically by almost any measure, the fact is Minnesota was the first state in the nation, in the mid-1980s, to win public school choice; the first state, in the early 1990s, to win charter schools; and the first state, just last year, to adopt legislation granting parents tax credits and deductions for both private and public school expenses.

Not a single one of these successes, I would contend, would have been possible unless public opinion and legislative campaigns on their behalf had been Minnesota-rooted in every sense of the term. Most concretely, this has meant not bashing public education in ways that might resonate well elsewhere.

(II) Many Passions

A second lesson flows easily from this first one. Much is correctly made that Ronald Reagan focused on only two issues during the eight years of his presidency: Reducing taxes and ending the Evil Empire. And needless to say, if he had to pick just two dragons to slay, I trust he chose the right ones.

But the obverse of his preoccupation was his virtual silence on what I, and surely what many of you, have long believed to be the gravest social problem confronting our nation: The extraordinary increase, since the 1960s, in the number of boys and girls forced to grow up without their fathers. I start from the premise that unless and until out-of-wedlock birth rates and divorce rates are reduced significantly, everything else we attempt to do -- both in or out of government -- to improve education, retard violence, decrease drug use and all the rest will be severely compromised. Yet according to Dinesh D'Souza, President Reagan may never once have publicly uttered the word "illegitimacy" during his entire time in office.

Was this a mistake? I'm hesitant to say so, at least too vigorously, given the world-changing import of the victories he did achieve. But I would claim, more broadly, that when folks like us gather to generate lists of things to emphasize in advancing conservatism, that in the same way we can be insufficiently attuned to regional and cultural variations, we also can be insufficiently alert to the fact that there are more than two or three vital issues out there, and that different people -- be they conservative or otherwise -- invest wildly different amounts of passion in them.

I'm certainly not opposed to a candidate, or an office holder, or a Republican majority in Congress setting strict and spare priorities and sticking to them. I also recognize that some issues -- such as perpetually seeking to cut taxes -- are more equal and fundamental than others. But if the subject is the conservative movement writ large and nationwide, I really am a big tent kind of guy.

I don't know about you, but I'm incapable (or at least unwilling) to come up with a cramped sampling of issues on which conservatism ought to stake its future. I'm likewise reluctant to classify myself as one kind of conservative as opposed to another, as I see nothing contradictory in being simultaneously inspired by conservative impulses that are paleo, neo, cultural, religious, main street, or libertarian. And when it comes to the supposedly great divide separating conservatism's optimists and pessimists, I find myself mostly agreeing with the latter but envying the former -- and also recognizing that optimists are the ones who are most likely to actually win elections, not their more storm-clouded colleagues who are inclined, like me, to dwell on our slouch to Gomorrah.

(III) An Ear For Equity

Yet having argued, in essence, for a menu of different strokes for different folks, I nonetheless want to make the case for paying special attention to a particular constellation of issues. I also want to say something about how those issues ought to be pursued.

The conservative movement has an acute ear for freedom. It needs to improve its ear for equity. The right must demonstrate as much interest as the left in questions of race, poverty, urban decay, and an issue that likely will continue to swell in salience over the next couple of years, that of growing income inequality, be it real or a by-rote liberal charge.

I'm not arguing that conservatives ought to sidle up to liberal interpretations and remedies. What I am suggesting is that conservative leaders need to engage these issues more frequently and with more comfortableness than is often now the case -- and without, I might also add, any presumption that there is but one legitimate conservative view on them.

Let's consider, for instance, questions of affirmative action and racial preferences. I trust a strong majority of the men and women in this room are on the same page with scholars and activists such as Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly, and Bill Bennett whom, I think it's fair to say, are absolutist in their opposition to the public use of race. Yet while I mostly subscribe to their position -- and would, of course, have voted for Proposition 209 if I were a Californian -- the truth is my closest intellectual soulmate on questions of race is Glenn Loury, who favors a little wriggle room. Given our nation's history and circumstance, I take it for granted that a little flexibility is sometimes in order.

(I also take it for granted, by the way, that if a conservative is elected president in 2000, and despite claims on his part that "merit" and merit alone will be considered in naming cabinet and subcabinet members, he and his aides will consciously see to it that the new administration is staffed with requisite numbers of blacks, Hispanics, women, and the rest. But I digress.)

Even though Glenn Loury is not as perfectly colorblind as the conservative movement sees itself as, his perspective is not exactly left-wing, and the movement can only profit if it takes seriously the hesitations that he raises. The most compelling reason for believing this is the fact that very large numbers of Americans are not nearly as confident as you or I that the impetus behind the drive to end racial preferences is indeed benign.

(IV) A Favorite Color

Let me conclude with a few paragraphs about the kind of organizations we need to make all this work. Once more my bias is eclectic and my main frame of reference is Center of the American Experiment.

When asked what my aim for the Center is, my three preferred answers are: Fixing the world, preferably by Thursday. Or slightly more modestly, shifting the center of intellectual and political gravity in Minnesota to the right, maybe by Friday. Or most pertinently in light of today's discussion, going public with kitchen table conversations.

The very useful metaphor distinguishing "kitchen table conversations" from "conference table conversations" has been attributed to historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, among others. It has to do with how conference table conversations -- those involving politicians, business executives, foundation officials and the like -- tend to focus on policies, budgets, racism and such when dealing with issues such as poverty, education, and crime. Whereas kitchen table conversations -- those more likely to involve family and friends lingering over dinner or a drink -- tend to dwell instead on questions of character, responsibility, faith and other such normative things. The kinds of emphases and orientations, in other words, that make up at least half the equation when considering the hardest problems confronting us as a people, but precisely the half that routinely gets ignored or downplayed in more conventional conference table (which is to say, more constrained political and policy) discussions.

Returning to the Center, my colleagues and I have sought to correct this imbalance by bringing in and publishing scholars and activists such as Bob Woodson, Marvin Olasky, Michael Medved, Jean Bethke Elshtain, David Blankenhorn and, of course, Professor Loury. Men and women who understand keenly the power and reach of the very culture itself. As a general rule, actually, I would say that our most successful public programs -- those which strike the hungriest nerves -- are those which deal with subjects such as race and responsibility that people do talk about frequently and energetically in private, but rarely with equal candor in public.

Not surprisingly, I believe conservative organizations should spend more time plowing in these vineyards -- boldly but also with grace -- than they currently do, as our movement can only be helped if national conversations turn increasingly to values and virtues. But again, I'm a lower-case catholic in these matters, as I also recognize the importance of divisions of labor.

Take Minnesota one last time. American Experiment is free to focus on what we do best -- which is another way of saying on what I'm personally most interested and competent in -- because other organizations emphasize other issues. These include groups like the Minnesota Family Council, which devotes a significant portion of its time to pro-life activities, and organizations like the newly created Taxpayers League of Minnesota, which is genetically encoded to howl like mad at the barest scent of a new tax.

I would sum up this way. This is a very big country, one in which all political philosophies come with different sounds and different feels in different places, just like our nation's accents and climates do. And while conservatism, of course, is grounded in one vivid idea -- that of freedom -- I would contend that the movement in its name would benefit if we came to better appreciate that its favorite color -- certainly the preferred color for its tent -- ought to be plaid.

NOTES

¹ Adapted from Dr. Pearlstein's remarks at conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, April 23, 1998, in Oak Brook, Il. Others on the panel, titled "Leadership for America: Breakthrough Strategies to Promote Freedom and Civil Society," included Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute; Richard Lowry, editor of National Review; and Lisa Nelson, director of public affairs, Office of the Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives.