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 Posted: 10/ 03/ 02 3:33 pm Post subject: How American conservatism recovered the power |
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How American conservatism recovered the power which eludes Canada's reformers
by Mike Byfield
The Report, October 7, 2002 (Cover Story)
http://report.ca/archive/report/20021007/p10i021007f.html
IN 1964, the North American right was woebegone. That year, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson hammered Republican contender Barry Goldwater by 486 electoral college votes to 52. In Canada, conservative principles such as the sanctity of family and the dignity of work were drowning in popular esteem for the welfare state and sexual licence. Among the teeming baby-boom generation, the term "conservative" conjured up images of pot-bellied southern sheriffs beating Negro demonstrators and college students with clubs. Since then, however, the United States has generated a dynamic conservative movement capable of electing right-leaning presidents--Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. In contrast, Canadian conservatism remains electorally and philosophically impotent, especially at the federal level.
Why the dramatic difference between the fortunes of the conservative cause in these two neighbouring countries?
"The right in Canada has allowed itself to become fragmented, disastrously so," says Peter McCormick, a political scientist from the University of Lethbridge. "Reunification appears impossible for the foreseeable future. This division has left Canadian conservatism weaker than its American counterpart ever was in the 1960s." Progressive Conservatives, despite their name, ape the leftist policies of Canada's all-powerful Liberals, putting themselves at odds with the genuinely conservative Canadian Alliance. Even together, the two "conservative" parties would currently be lucky to score one-third of the national vote. "What's even more of a calamity is the very obvious fact that both parties are bereft of new ideas," comments Prof. McCormick. "Their lack of intellectual vigour is crippling. Only through the generation of new ideas was American conservatism able to regain its stature."
The Yankee right's recovery occurred in the face of formidable odds. A generation ago, liberals utterly dominated the forums which have historically produced social ideas in western societies: the universities and mainstream churches. The political left was equally triumphant in the media. As early as 1950, famed literary critic Lionel Trilling spoke for an entire generation of academics and journalists, when he wrote: "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition...It is the plain fact [that] there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."
Among the pioneers who led the American conservative renaissance is Reed Irvine, the founder of Accuracy In Media (AIM). His Washington-based organization corrects misrepresentations propagated by liberal media. "In my youth, I was on the far left, but I realized that Marxism in any form causes grief, not good," recalls the 80-year-old economist, who previously worked for the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. "I decided to fight back against the constant stream of lies and distortions. Fortunately, quite a few citizens felt the same way, and the cause of liberty is better defended now."
When Mr. Irvine started AIM in 1969, conservatives had just three lobby groups in the capital: the American Enterprise Institute, the American Conservative Union and Young Americans For Freedom. Today there are about 100 right-minded think-tanks and other organizations in Washington. Tracking that extraordinary expansion of conservative activism is both a profession and a passion for historian Lee Edwards, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation and an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of the Americas. Among his books is The Conservative Revolution: The Movement That Remade America. Mr. Edwards comments that modern American conservatives met five factors essential to any successful political movement. For its part, the Canadian right has yet to adequately fulfill even one of Mr. Edwards' criteria, which include:
A readily understood, relevant philosophy. To cite just one example, Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, published while he was an Arizona senator, sold 3.5 million copies. Panned or ignored by media pundits at the time, the book remains a landmark statement concerning free markets, individual responsibility, lower taxes, a strong military, states' rights and other centre-right principles. In Canada, the few hefty political treatises from conservatives have never enjoyed much readership.
A national constituency. By the late 1960s, the rapidly strengthening American middle class was sympathetic to conservative arguments in favour of lower taxes. Canadian tax weariness did not erupt until the early 1990s, when the middle class raged against the Progressive Conservative government which imposed the goods and services tax (GST). The Tories, who had shifted from right to left on crucial issues, were destroyed almost overnight. By sheer luck, the GST storm bypassed the Liberals, who inaugurated and still champion lavish public-sector spending. With the Conservatives shattered, the resurgent Grits have been able to confine the right-wing strength of the Canadian Alliance to the West.
Money. Dr. Edwards says American conservatives have led their leftist rivals with innovations in fundraising, the essential fuel for a political movement. Compared to Canada, U.S. capitalists have amassed more and larger family fortunes, and hence the American rich fund their charitable foundations more amply. At the middle-class level, the Christian Coalition (founded in 1988) and similar populist organizations quickly learned to use mailing lists, computers and other new technology for rallying support. Americans also enjoy higher incomes and lower taxes than Canadians, leaving ordinary citizens with more money to donate to their favourite causes.
Charismatic and principled leadership. President Ronald Reagan, always underestimated by liberal intellectuals as sleepy, dishonest and incompetent, struck a powerful chord with American voters of almost all classes. His legacy still benefits Republicans. Although Mr. Reagan compromised frequently with his political adversaries (as any democratic leader must do) when governing from 1981 to 1989, his blunt statements of principle never varied. No modern Canadian politician on the right has achieved equal eloquence and ideological clarity.
Media savvy. The American right has achieved access to mass audiences through an unexpected medium:talk radio. Television and newspaper outlets remain largely in liberal hands, but conservative talk stars such as political commentator Rush Limbaugh and Christian psychologist James Dobson did an end run around the more dominant medium. "In almost all markets, the right predominates decisively over the left in the talk-radio format," Mr. Edwards says. Conservatives, Mr. Irvine adds, have also exploited the Internet aggressively. WorldNetDaily, for example, claims almost two million viewers a month, completely outclassing liberal competitors such as Microsoft's Slate.com. Yet another conservative electronic boost is Christian broadcasting, which has mushroomed south of the border. In Canada, Christian media, talk radio and partisan Web sites have yet to achieve the same market penetration or much political impact.
AMERICAN right-wing breaches have been made into the liberal fortresses of television and dailies. The two most popular syndicated print columnists are conservative pundits George Will and Cal Thomas, each appearing in more than 500 newspapers. They have no Canadian equivalent. With respect to television, 70% of Americans get their nightly news from the unimpeachably liberal NBC, ABC and CBS. But Fox News, owned by right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has overtaken the ratings of CNN (founded by arch-liberal Ted Turner) in the all-news TV format. Canadian television still remains almost completely a centre-left domain. This situation continues to be enforced by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, a federal regulatory agency which holds the power of life and death over broadcasters.
All in all, while liberals still hold the upper hand in U.S. communications, Americans now have reasonable access to news and commentary from a variety of perspectives on the right and left. The same cannot be said in Canada, a point which even leftists have begun to acknowledge. This summer, the Winnipeg Free Press printed a fretful column by B.C. author Terry Glavin concerning full-page ads in several dailies which had been publicly endorsed by dozens of newsmen. These veteran professionals cautioned Canadians that "one or two multi-channel media giants, each with a single national voice, [may soon] be telling us what to think."
In fact, Mr. Glavin notes, quasi-monopolies over news are already a fact in some cities. The CanWest Global TV/Southam conglomerate commands enormous weight in newspapers and broadcasting. The Bell Canada empire includes the CTV and Toronto's Globe and Mail. Given the broad cross-ownership between Canadian television and newspapers (to a degree which is illegal in the U.S.), federal broadcast regulators have unprecedented leverage over Canada's print media. No Canadian conservative is likely to disagree with Mr. Glavin's warning: "If an independent, raucous and free press is vital to a healthy democracy, then we're in terrible shape."
The most effective strategic innovation by American conservatives has been the think-tank. Besides national institutes devoted to practically every conceivable aspect of public policy, there are locally focused think-tanks in 40 of the 50 American states. These non-profit private institutions fulfill two basic functions:
Think-tank specialists craft public policies which can actually be communicated to the public. Among academics, this tactic represents a radical shift. Outside of disciplines like the sciences and engineering, universities across North America are bastions of liberalism, heavily populated with social scientists and humanities professors who communicate with each other in jargon. Their professional prestige stems from elitist research intelligible only to their peers and from the disdain they evince for the judgment of anyone outside their chosen fields. But the specialists employed by conservative think-tanks, although every bit as qualified in technical terms as their university counterparts, work hard to speak to the voting public in plain English.
Think-tanks produce policy papers targeted at politicians and civil servants. Their specialists even draft proposed legislation on technically demanding topics such as regulating petrochemical plants or guidelines for expanding public-housing projects. To the legislator, the think-tank represents an alternative source of expert advice. Otherwise the politician in charge of a government department must rely for policy guidance on his own bureaucrats, whose primary interest is all too often the expansion of the public sector at the expense of taxpayers.
Liberals view the plethora of conservative think-tanks as an invasion of democratic institutions by privately financed specialists promoting the special interests of their paymasters. The top 20 conservative think-tanks were analyzed in 1999 by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a liberal group. During 1996, the NCRP reported, the top 20 raised US$158 million. That year, the Heritage Foundation (established in 1973) spent more than the top 10 liberal think-tanks combined, the Harvard Political Review calculated. From 1990 to 2000, the top 20 right-wing think-tanks were expected to spend over US$1 billion.
That money has had a powerful impact on American governance, according to NCRP president Robert Bothwell: "When it comes to 'winning' political battles, ultimate success results less from who's doing the right thing and more from whose view of reality dominates the battlefield. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the millions spent by conservative think-tanks have enabled them virtually to dictate the issues and terms of national political debates."
Canada's pre-eminent conservative think-tank is the Fraser Institute, launched in 1974 with an initial annual budget of $75,000. Under the tutelage of former Bank of Canada economist Michael Walker, the Vancouver-based group has studied authoritatively and pronounced forthrightly on scores of issues ranging from hospital waiting times to agricultural marketing boards. At the heart of the Fraser's original crusade was its loathing of a notion beloved of Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau: that government can provide a more stable long-term planning and financial basis for industrial development than competitive private enterprise.
The '70s were the heyday of Canada's public sector. The country's best-known think-tank was the Ottawa-based Conference Board of Canada. In 1973 came Toronto's C.D. Howe Institute, named for a former Liberal cabinet minister. Both organizations endorsed the Canadian "mixed" economy of government and private investment. Not the Fraser Institute, whose economists hammered Mr. Trudeau with embarrassing accuracy as Ottawa wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars on Liberal schemes. With the country perilously close to insolvency and lagging further behind U.S. industrial performance through the 1990s, the Fraser's reputation blossomed. Conservative economic guru Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate, generously complimented the Vancouver initiative as "one of the most influential think-tanks in the world."
But its success has proven hard to imitate elsewhere in Canada. Fledgling free-market institutes now exist in Halifax, Montreal and Winnipeg, but they still lack the funds to undertake aggressive research programs and pound their policy messages home effectively. Most Canadian industry, it seems, lacks the stomach to support head-on debates with the public sector's tax-financed advocates. Shortages of cash also hamstring conservative social lobbies like the Canada Family Action Coalition and REAL Women of Canada, whose influence on governments remains minuscule compared to their American counterparts.
Like Professor McCormick, conservative movement historian Lee Edwards stresses that the American right's dramatic recovery was engineered on the strength of positive ideas, not on massive financial donations. At the heart of that movement has been a small flock of magazines. The archetypes were Commentary, created by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, and the most famous of all, National Review, published privately by William Buckley since 1955. Both of these publications hail from New York City.
"Our magazine is small--just four permanent editorial staff and less than 35,000 subscribers," explains Gary Rosen, managing editor of Commentary. "Nonetheless, this magazine and others like it play vital roles. We provide a forum for fresh ideas. Our writers critique new developments of interest to neo-conservative readers--actually, I guess we're just called conservatives nowadays--with a depth, accuracy and sympathy which would never be provided by the mainstream press." It is not just a matter of the liberal bias of newspaper editors and writers, Mr. Rosen says. "The general media market for feature articles with in-depth analysis has been getting continually thinner for a long time." The trend in advertising-driven publishing is toward consumer niches (i.e., glossy tributes to cuisine, yachting or even teddy bears) and glitterati-studded gossip, like the Hollywood-fixated People Magazine.
During the 1960s, the Catholic William Buckley's National Review conducted a savage political battle with the John Birch Society, effectively getting the world-conspiracy paranoiacs removed from the ranks of respectable conservatives. Today, the right-wing press remains a sprawling, squalling intellectual free-for-all. In a characteristic dispute, Tom Fleming, editor of Illinois-based Chronicles, slams the American Spectator for "wasting millions trolling for [former Democratic president Bill] Clinton's paramours among the trailer trash of Arkansas." Thanks to such combative debates, new concepts require genuine usefulness to survive, and hopefully thrive, across the conservative spectrum.
In one respect, American conservative publications are entirely in accord: not one of them can survive on subscriber and advertising revenue alone. "We make an annual appeal for donations," says Commentary's Rosen. "Although begging doesn't come naturally to us, it's actually gratifying to see the depth of loyalty among our readers." Chronicles canvasses its subscribers twice a year. Mr. Fleming comments, "Lewis Lapham [editor of Harper's Magazine] once told me that no publication could make a living from advertising with a circulation under 200,000. That certainly rules us out; our subscriber base is 6,000."
In Canada, this magazine (with a current circulation of 43,000) has always relied partially on financial support from investors willing to maintain a conservative media voice. Ironically, although the North American right strongly favours the efficiency of profit-making enterprises, the conservative movement's publications and think-tanks survive by the grace of gifts. But perhaps that reliance on individual generosity is not surprising. "Conservatism," wrote Barry Goldwater, an Episcopalian of Christian-Jewish descent, "is not an economic theory." Instead, it "puts material things in their proper place" and sees every human being as "a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires."
The Post takes Chretien's scalp, but can't earn a dime
The National Post, in just four years, can claim exceptional achievements. Its aggressive scandalmongering played a pivotal role in forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Also, the Post is already Canada's largest circulation newspaper outside Toronto. Yet those successes may not save the money-losing daily in the long run. "The national advertising agencies are centred in Toronto, and they're pretty parochial," says Post editor Ken Whyte. "Unless we can become a bigger player in Toronto itself, we are not likely to get the national advertising revenue which our national circulation justifies."
North America's conservative newspapers are an odd lot, very few in number. The Wall Street Journal targets strictly upscale business readers. The Washington Times, which belongs to a religious sect known as the Moonies, has only a modest and moribund circulation. Tabloid entrants are the down-market New York Post and, arguably, the Sun chain in Canada. In fact, this continent's only mainstream conservative newspaper is the National Post. Its founder was Conrad Black, a Canadian-bred media magnate who has no love for socialism in general and the Chretien regime in particular. Mr. Black consciously created the Post as a right-wing champion modelled on Britain's Daily Telegraph, which he also owns.
During the last federal election, the Post exploded a bombshell: Mr. Chretien had called the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada in 1996 requesting consideration of a loan for the Grand-Mère Auberge, a hotel which had not qualified for that money under normal lending criteria. Previous to his election, Mr. Chretien was part owner of the hotel in question. The loan of $615,000 was duly granted in 1997. The Post later came up with evidence Mr. Chretien might have an ongoing interest in a golf course adjacent to and commercially linked with the hotel. Mr. Chretien's denials of any current financial involvement failed to convince sceptics, particularly since the prime minister had authority over any investigation.
An elected official exerting pressure on a crown agency outside regulatory bounds for the benefit of his friends or himself would be deemed unethical in any law-abiding democracy. Post reporters kept a relentless spotlight on the prime minister's other shenanigans in Shawinigan, his home riding. There was the question of the $200,000 lighted fountain in Saint Maurice River. A secret slush fund of local grants made by Human Resources and Development Canada raised more eyebrows. Mr. Chretien shrugged off these revelations and others, which he claimed to view as the normal course of government.
Riding sky-high in the polls over the hapless Canadian Alliance and all other Opposition parties, the Liberal prime minister had reason to think a fourth term in office would be his for the asking. Yet last month Mr. Chretien reluctantly promised to step down by February 2004. Ted Morton, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, believes two factors forced that resignation. First, former finance minister Paul Martin had acquired a grip over the party apparatus--a grip of unprecedented strength for a Canadian rebel seeking to unseat a still-electable leader of his own party. Second, the Post's investigative work had triggered a media frenzy which persuaded voters in the key province of Ontario that Mr. Chretien was sleazy, maybe even a crook.
Liberal media outlets such as the Globe and Mail and CBC would not likely have hounded Mr. Chretien unless the Post had forced the investigative pace, Professor Morton suggests. "Academics refer to this as priming the pump. Once the sleaze factor became established in the popular mind, it was invaluable to Martin's people. It gave them a powerful argument that Chretien was a danger to the Liberals' future."
But if the corruption factor matters that much, why didn't Canadians turn on the prime minister when the Grand-Mère affair first surfaced during the last election? The U of C political scientist responds that Canadians apparently suffer from "battered voter's syndrome." Like a weak-willed wife who clings to a physically abusive husband yet eventually murders him, Canadians will put up with Mr. Chretien's abuses of power for a long time, but not necessarily forever, Prof. Morton half-jokingly theorizes.
Despite its Chretien coup, or conceivably because of it, the National Post's future is clouded by several factors. Mr. Whyte, formerly the managing editor of this magazine, says several influential ad agencies have made it clear they do not sympathize with his newspaper's conservative stance on many issues. In addition, industry-wide surveys conducted by Newspaper Audience Databank between last January and June showed a 17% decline in the daily's national readership, including a 24% decline in the Toronto region. (National weekday circulation was 221,000 in June.) Finally, last year Mr. Black sold his interest in the Post to the CanWest Global TV/Southam group. CanWest is controlled by Winnipeg's Asper family, who are long-time Liberal supporters. How long will the Aspers continue to underwrite the Post's losses, which the Globe estimates could be $10 million for 2003?
Post publisher Peter Viner says Toronto circulation is recovering somewhat due to a reduction in his paper's price and the restoration of editorial content cut during an earlier bid to economize. Some analysts feel that the Aspers will continue to let CanWest carry the Post for reasons of prestige; the political influence which stems from owning a national daily can be addictive. Then there are the readers of Hogtown, who choose every day between the Post, Globe, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun. Also significant is a subway freebie called Metro Today. Even so, more readers may slowly cotton to the feisty Post, enabling the newcomer to grow in what is currently North America's most competitive newspaper market. On the other hand, readers, advertisers or owners may choose not to co-operate. Surveying his newspaper's prospects, editor Whyte comments candidly: "We've got a shot." |
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