A devastating, hilarious and reality-based takedown of conservative policies.

You don't get to be as spectacularly ineffective at governing as today's conservatives without working very, very hard at it. In one sense, Republican misrule — see the gaping budget deficit, the Iraq quagmire, our crumbling infrastructure, the disastrous response to Katrina, and on and on — is puzzling: How can a movement so famously brilliant at gaining and hoarding power be so lousy at exercising it? Simple. As Greg Anrig shows in this devastating intellectual takedown, conservative governance — based on ideas concocted by ideologues in well funded think tanks — is bad by design.

Anrig argues that conservatives have honed a four-step methodology of misrule: First, divert attention from genuine problem, like growing income inequality or terrorism, with hysterical alarm over a largely imaginary one, like excessive government regulation or ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Second, manufacture reasons why the imaginary problem requires weakening the government's domestic capabilities, as with tax cuts for the wealthy, or unilateral military adventures. Third, make up stories explaining why the failure (reduced government revenue and hence a drastic rollback of essential services; an expensive and immoral foreign policy disaster) isn't really a failure. Fourth, and last, leave it to the Democrats to solve both the original problem and the new one created by the conservative policy — and to argue that government, further discredited by conservative mismanagement, is the solution.

He demolishes conservative policy ideas point by point, showing how, far from delivering on promises to make America stronger and safer, and our government smaller and more efficient, they have produced precisely the opposite outcomes. All Americans should read Anrig's book so we won't get fooled again.

Who Manages the Economy Better—Republicans or Democrats? By Arthur I. Blaustein Most Americans have one eye on the nation’s financial crises and the other on the presidential election. And they are asking themselves, “Is McCain or Obama, the Democrats or the Republicans, better for the economic health of the country as well as for my own financial well-being?” That is the defining question of this election. A businessman who voted for Bush twice and Clinton in ’96, told me, “Barack Obama sounds really impressive and I have to admit that the goals of his social programs – particularly health care, education and the environment – seem good. But I’m worried the Democrats can’t manage the economy as well and they’ll get into my wallet.” Many voters agree, and a recent poll shows that an overwhelming majority cites the economy as their top concern. For years the pollsters have found that most voters believe the Republicans do better with the economy. I’ve heard the businessman’s basic point – that the Democrats have better social policies but the Republicans are better managers of the economy – more often than I’ve heard Judy Garland sing “Over the Rainbow.” But is it true? Don’t count on this question being examined and answered in a full, open and honest debate. Twenty-eight years ago – with the election of Ronald Reagan – we entered an entirely new phase of presidential politics. The focus since then has been who can raise the most money and package the best media image, rather than who can demonstrate the most competence and capacity to govern. Our country’s political, economic and social life has been reduced to a battle of fifteen-second sound bites and thirty-second commercials, with results reported like a football score. TV news has turned democracy into “duhmocracy.” Fortunately, we don’t have to depend on campaign slogans or advertising bucks to frame the debate. We can look to the record. Here’s the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most general ... continue reading >

Progressive Putdown: American Grit It is possible I’ve read books worse than Tony Blankley’s American Grit: What It Will Take To Survive And Win In The 21st Century, but it is hard to recall any of them right now. This slim volume – 188 pages of actual argument, large type on every page, ample white space between every line – would make for a very nice present to a very dim conservative who you wanted to play a practical joke on.     Blankley is a syndicated columnist who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich and speechwriter to Ronald Reagan. He is a man who knows quite a bit more about launching political insurrections than I do. Even so, I’ve rarely heard of ideological renewal – much less a strategy for 21st century survival -- emerging quite so haphazardly. Blankley’s vision for the future is the sort of thing that would hardly withstand the rigors of a shoutfest on the McLaughlin Report. Which is fitting, in a sense, because that’s where it comes from.     “It never occurred to me precisely where my political philosophy was moving until an appearance on the McLaughlin Group television show a few years ago,” writes Blankley. He goes on to relate a particularly illuminating exchange he had in which McLaughlin demanded to know the agenda of “neo-cons” like Blankley. “I’m not a neo-con,” Blankley replied. “Well, what are you?” asked McLaughlin. What comes next is a direct quote from the book: “With the red light of the television camera focused on me, I paused and thought for a second or two, and then more or less blurted out, ‘I’m a nationalist!’”     “That ended the conversation,” recalls Blankley, “but only started me thinking more about ... continue reading >

Reviews: The Conservatives Have No Clothes “Ending the conservative era requires organizing, yes, but also hard thinking and shrewd analysis. When progressives of the future look back at how they triumphed, one of the people they’ll thank is Greg Anrig. Drawing inspiration from the work of the early neoconservatives who demolished public support for liberal programs, Anrig casts a sharp eye on conservative ideas and nostrums and shows that many of them simply don’t work because they are rooted more in ideological dreams than in reality. Facts are stubborn things, Ronald Reagan once said, and Anrig makes good use of them in this important and engaging book.” — E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out and syndicated columnist “Since the ‘Reagan revolution,’ conservatives have garnered political power by claiming that pro-government progressives (aka liberals) could not lead America. In my view, they have a point. Now, however, Greg Anrig offers a powerful reply: Anti-government conservatives have proven that they can’t govern America either. In this well-researched and witty book, Anrig critiques ‘right-wing ideas’ by examining what the policies and programs that embodied them have wrought over the last three decades. While giving several conservative ideas their due, he finds their record to be mixed at best. His examples include everything from the federal bureaucracy’s hyperpoliticization to the rise in childhood poverty, from tragedies on the Gulf Coast to misadventures in the Persian Gulf. Disagree where one might, Anrig has given thinking conservatives something to think about. Even better, he has reminded thinking progressives that their best ideas concern how government can cost-effectively serve the common good." — John J. DiIulio Jr., political science professor and first director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives “Greg Anrig’s wide-ranging and perceptive book looks beyond the ideology of the right and offers a persuasive account of the many policy fail ... continue reading >

Greg Anrig, vice president of policy at The Century Foundation, is the author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing. He is also co-editor of four collections of essays: "Liberty Under Attack: Reclaiming Our Freedoms in An Age of Terror" (PublicAffairs, 2007); "Immigration's New Frontiers: Experiences from the Emerging Gateway States" (The Century Foundation Press, 2006); "The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism" (PublicAffairs, 2003), and "Social Security Reform: Beyond the Basics," (The Century Foundation Press, 1999). Since 1994, he has been responsible for overseeing The Century Foundation’s projects on public policy as well as its fellows. Previously, he was a staff writer and Washington correspondent for Money magazine.

PBC Interview: Greg Anrig on the Failures of Conservative Governance Q. What’s the basic argument of your book? A. It's that conservative ideas which really have dominated political discourse since the 1970s, one after the other, failed to deliver on the promises that were made and to a large extent have made conditions demonstrably worse. And this is because their ideas and arguments are based on a belief system that disconnected from reality. That’s true not only at the level of the Bush administration but also at the state and local level. Q. Give a few examples. A. I think the emblematic idea is what William Kristol and Robert Kagan have called  “benevolent hegemony.”  It’s the view that the United States’ role is to dominate the world and that we want to maintain our dominance by being willing to exert ourselves unilaterally and by force if need be.  Obviously, that idea was implemented in  Iraq.  And what we’ve seen there is that instead of being safer we have become more vulnerable.   Q. What about closer to home? A. The conservative movement for years has said that the best way to govern is to minimize the involvement of bureaucrats in Americans’ lives, so what we need to do is privatize all the different kinds of things that the government’s involved in doing—food and drug protection, environmental protection and so forth—and undercut the regulatory system.   We’ve seen many examples. Take FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], which was actually viewed as a model agency for many years. It was reformed along conservative lines; the Bush administration politicized the top levels of the agency, privatized, cut programs that previously had been successful. And ultimately that came home to roost after Katrina.   You can apply the FEMA case to many other agencies throughout the government.  It’s by no means the exception.  In fact there are very few exceptions in the government of ... continue reading >

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	PBC Interview: Greg Anrig on the Right's Faith in Market "Pixie Dust"
	PBC Interview: Greg Anrig on the Right's Four-Step Metholology of Misrule