On Rub Off

Jesse:
E.J. Dionne has a nifty article in the WaPost about President Obama's attempts to build a new consensus.

It outlines two attempts; one, the Administration split "liberal" and "moderate conservative" journalists into two groups, and had the President speak to them separately; with one group, he emphasized the breaks from the Bush Administration, and with the other, he emphasized how it's basically acceptably in line with the end of the Bush Administration, when they stopped being completely crazy (I'll let you guess which). Second, Dionne mentions over goals of bringing together libertarian and moderate conservative views on security, and free marketeer and progressive views on the economy.

The idea here is to try to improve the country; they'll have national security policies that are sound, but not the horrifying offenses to humanity that the Bush Administrations were, and they'll have a economy that still ticks along using the free market, but will lessen the excesses that Bush-Reagan (and, let's be honest, some Clinton) policies encouraged.

But what's more interesting to me is that this smacks of actually "bringing people together". Which I think could have impressive results.

It's been a pet theory of mine for a while that part of how coalitions hold together is through "bleed". So, the Republican coalition basically consists of libertarians, business, religious conservatives and security conservatives. Would these four naturally hang together in the wild? No. But they're pushed together by "enemy of my enemy" thinking. And I think they then tend to stay together because their ideas tend to bleed into each other somewhat. So, is there any reason for social conservatives to be across-the-board anti-government? No. They want government intervention on some of their big issues, abortion foremost (since they want a ban). But, by hanging out with business and libertarians, I think they take on some of those characteristics; for example, I think there's some implication in What's the Matter with Kansas? (which I read for Book Club, but haven't quite gotten around to posting on) that, when religious conservatives do talk about the market, the free market becomes somewhat "godly"; leave it alone, and everything will be OK. I think the same process makes libertarians into security conservatives, makes business more anti-government than they should be, and so on. The biggest example of this I'd see on the left is the expansion of anti-Israel thought in a movement that originally was supportive.

So, what I think is exciting about the Dionne piece (to tie it all together) is that I think the Obama Administration may pay off if it can, in fact, bring disparate groups together. By sucking in moderate portions of the Republican coalition and making them talk to each other, they may be able to create something more lasting simply by jamming people together. There's hope that national security moderates could come to be more sensitive to libertarian concerns, and vice versa. There's hope that social conservatives and business could come to accept good government, if not big. And on, and on, and on (hopefully).