Heroic Conservatism
Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't)
by Michael Gerson
HarperOne, 320 pp., $26.95

This well written and engaging memoir from former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson offers a strong defense of administration policies and a you-are-there perspective on some of the most important decisions and utterances made by President Bush in his first six years in office.

Along the way, Gerson also reveals the novel ideological character of Bush's presidency, as well as the limits of his approach to governing. Moreover, his account goes out of its way to confirm the fears of earlier writers who have attacked the president for being an "imposter" conservative. It is an apology for the administration that unapologetically defends the administration's most unconservative aspects.

As Gerson writes, "It is fair to ask: In what sense is this approach of mine conservative?" It is a good question. Gerson calls his approach "idealism," which he contrasts with the "noble pessimism" of "traditional conservatism." And it is worth studying his approach, since its most prominent adherent, according to Gerson, is George W. Bush himself.

Gerson's idealism has two parts. The first, "idealism abroad," concerns the "promotion of liberty and hope" as "alternatives to hatred and bitterness." The second, "idealism at home," involves a "determination to care for the weak and vulnerable" while healing "racial divisions" by the "expansion of opportunity." Idealism is not the "ideology of minimal government," nor is it the "rigid secularization" that endangers "one of the main sources

Furthermore, idealism itself is endangered. Currently there is a "backlash" against it. Some on the right seek to replace idealism abroad with "realist" policies which are "deeply skeptical" that "other countries can sustain democracy." Others want to "get back" to what they see as the "real business" of conservatism: "cutting government." Gerson does not like these people. He saw their governing vision at work "in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," when the "administration found men and women who had never had a bank account." Such a problem--"so clearly rooted in governmentally enforced oppression"--requires an "active response by government."

If all this sounds to you remarkably like Democratic talking points circa 2005--that somehow an emphasis on individual responsibility rather than government dependency causes human suffering--you are right. Democrats emerge from Heroic Conservatism relatively unscathed. True, Gerson criticizes their party's abortion policies, its secularism, its view that "ethical relativism is the only answer to moral arrogance," and its lack of serious ideas about how to confront the nightmarish "combination of Islamic radicalism and proliferation." But he saves his real ire for those conservatives, if they exist, who do not hold the "radical belief in the rights of every individual" and a "conviction" that government "must act"--"when appropriate"--to "secure those rights when they are assaulted by oppression, poverty, and disease."

Nor does Gerson hold his fire on those "conservative critics" who enjoy the "severe pleasure of cutting food stamps," who seek "steep reductions in foreign assistance," and who wanted to pay "the costs of Katrina" by "postponing or ending the Medicare prescription-drug benefit." He blames the "weak, uncreative policy" of the now-forgotten 2004 State of the Union address on "budget concerns" caused by the "internal triumph of conventional Republican thinking." He rejects the idea that the Bush administration's budgets were excessively large; he found them "frustratingly restrictive."