Listen in as I interview journalist Conor Friedersdorf. In this interview we discuss the state of conservatism and the GOP, the failure of the "Karl Rove strategy", and the importance of narrative in politics. Conor is one of my regular reads and is a refreshing voice of intellectual integrity in an ocean of partisan shills.

Conor Friedersdorf is a writer, editor and consultant. His credits include The Atlantic, Culture11, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Orange County Register, The San Bernardino Sun, Draft Magazine, and many others.

Recommended readings from Conor Friedersdorf:

• Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism
• Substance Matters
• Whiplash Watching the Right
• There's Nothing to Fear But All the Awful Things That Might Happen
• No One on The Corner Has Swagger Like Rush

Transcript

Will Hinton: Welcome to the Good Will Hinton weekly podcast. Today I am joined by Conor Friedersdorf. Conor is a journalist who splits his time between New York and California. His credits include The Atlantic, Culture11, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Orange County Register. He is currently writing for The American Scene, a fantastic group blog that I highly recommend.

WH: Since the election occurred there has been this great vast discussion among Republicans and conservatives over what the state of the conservative movement is. I'd love to get your thoughts on what that conversation has looked like and what you have taken from it over the past four or five months.

Conor Friedersdorf: I think that my assessment of the current state of the movement is that it is shrinking. You look at polls showing that Republicans are less and less popular and the conservative worldview seems to be less and less popular. And I think that conservatism and libertarianism to some extent...they are unpopular as narratives because of recent events. People are looking at the financial crisis as a repudiation of the free market and they are looking at the presidency of George W. Bush as a repudiation of conservatism. And I don't think that those two things are quite right. I would argue that a lot of the Bush administration's mistakes came about because they weren't applying conservative principles...they certainly weren't applying fiscal conservatism. And they also weren't applying the kind of caution in foreign affairs that I would like to see from conservatives. And as the movement has shrunk, the conversation, a lot of it, has been between two camps, one of which is saying we just need to get back to core principles and the other camp is saying, no, we need to reform and make changes and we need to win over new converts. I don't really subscribe to either one of those positions entirely. On some things, on fiscal discipline, for example, conservatism does have to get back to core principles. On other matters I do think it has to change. I don't think there is any one approach that is going to fix everything.

WH: When you talk about this idea of the base shrinking...I have talked to people for a number of years about what I call the "Karl Rove" strategy that states that the way to win national elections is to fire up the base and don't worry about the moderates and independents. That's fine when your base is growing and large but I see that as a failing strategy. Does that theory ring true to you?

CF: Obviously whatever Republicans did in the last election was a failing strategy. It failed. And if you look at numbers of Americans who think of themselves as Republicans or who think that the direction of the conservative movement is the right one, it is shrinking, there is no question that it is failing. I think there is another problem with the Karl Rove, rev up the base strategy and that is that the ultimate goal isn't to win elections. It is to win elections and do good things, to enact good reforms, to run the country well. And I think that the way that the Bush administration campaigned and governed....they won elections...but I don't think that their 8 years in office were very good years for people who care about certain conservative things. Again I will return to fiscal discipline. For someone like me who cares about balanced budgets and the long term deficit, what that means for the health of the country, it doesn't do any good to have a Republican or conservative in office if that person makes the problem a lot worse than it was when his predecessor was in office. So I think that it is important for a political movement to win elections...and for the Republican party, that's what a political party does, is try and win elections. But for your average conservative citizen, it is important to remember that it's not just about winning elections, it's what happens after you win elections and the strategy you pursue matters for what happens after the election is over.

WH: There also seems to be a discussion within the conservative movement over what the leadership looks like and there is a feeling of there being some sort of vacuum and various people being thrust forward into that role, be it a Rush Limbaugh or a Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal...even to the point of where somehow Miss California has become some sort of conservative mascot. Is this really the right focus now?

CF: I think that conservatives, the conservative base if you will, has a terrible tendency to define as their leaders whoever it is that liberals are attacking, to define as their leader whoever it is that liberals seem to hate. Miss California gets attacked, unfairly I would say, I haven't followed that too closely. I don't think a beauty pageant contestant should be a political punching bag for either side. And you can think that Miss California was unfairly maligned and also think that it's absurd to hold up a beauty pageant contestant who you don't know anything else about as a political spokesman for you. So I think that its very hard for a political movement to plan out strategically who its successful leaders are going to be. If you think back to 1992 when Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination, became a very popular president for a while...no one really planned on Bill Clinton's rise. A lot of people hadn't heard of him until the Democratic primaries that year. And so I think that, you know I have of course looked into Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford and I've looked into these other people that the Republicans have that are supposed to be viable candidates but maybe it is going to be someone else who we can't even imagine right now, someone I've never heard of.

WH: I like the use early on when you said "narrative". I tend to believe that one of the big reasons why Obama won this election was because he presented a compelling narrative that really somewhat got beyond getting into specific issues. What is a compelling narrative that conservatives and Republicans should be using? What does that narrative look like?

CF: I think it is a lot of different narratives actually. I think that...this world we live in and the facts of this world....they don't map onto any one party or any one ideology perfectly. And so part of being someone who wants to convince people that conservatism has merit is finding the stories in society right now that sort of demonstrate conservative truths. By stories, I don't mean made up things....I mean actual factual examples where there is some problem and you can see by looking at it that applying conservative principles would help it out. One example that I can think of right now is public employee unions. I think that this is a really good opportunity for Republicans...especially in California where I spend a lot of my time...there are these laws that allow public, that allow state employees to retire at the age of 50 with 90% of their salary paid as pension for the rest of their lives. And so firefighters are one example of this...you work as a firefighter from the time you are 20 to the time you are 50 and a lot of these guys are retiring and they are getting 90% of their salary and they are taking other jobs and it is very lucrative. And people are pretty sympathetic to firefighters...I certainly think that firefighters should be paid a good salary and compensated for the risk that they take. I think 90% of their salary for the rest of their lives once they turn 50 is a little excessive. And the thing that I would really hone in on is that this applies not only to the firefighters you think of running into burning buildings who are out in the field but also applies to the person on the firefighting force who is the public information officer, the person who stands on the street down the block from the fire and talks to reporters. It's not to say that job isn't important....just that I don't think we need to be compensating that person so much. These pensions apply to state janitors, the apply to just about every state employee....and again I don't mean to denigrate janitors, there is nothing wrong with cleaning places up that need to be done, but it seems absurd to me to pay these people a pension that is just many times what anyone in the private sector could ever enjoy, many times what any citizen enjoys. So I think that narrative..public employees just getting compensated in ways that are far beyond the average citizen that is paying their taxes, to pay their salaries....I think that's one example of a story that conservatives can tell that would really resonate with people and that might go a long way toward reforming some of the excesses in government spending.

WH: You wrote a piece a couple years ago talking about the tendency of conservatives to want to be activists and you made more of an encouragement to be journalists. I think about that and I think how often conservatives, they tend to lead with agenda but give short shrift to actual quality messaging, quality story telling...doing a quality work. The agenda tends to come first. Does that ring true with you that that is the case and what's the solution to that?

CF: It does ring true to me that that is the case and I think the solution...one solution is to just change the way that you encourage conservatives to go into certain fields. It's been a long time since the conservative movement realized, wow, we have a problem in journalism. It seems like a high percentage of journalists are liberal and the way that the conservative movement addressed this was to sort of create their own parallel institutions. Some of these were business things like FoxNews and others of these were non-profits like the Phillips Foundation that every year gives reporting fellowships to different people on the right. And it's not that this is a bad development per se....I mean, I'm glad a lot of these institutions are out there. But the problem is, first of all, when you create your own parallel institutions, you are sort of stuck over in the conservative ghetto where you are only talking to people who already agree with you and you can't convince anyone. The other problem with this is that the journalists who get hired at FoxNews and the journalists who get picked for the Phillips Foundation....some of them are great journalists who I would love to hire if I were starting something and others of them are so tied to the movement that they are sort of partisan hacks before they are intellectually honest journalists. I would say that it's a problem when you have one person whose agenda is that "I am going to create the best journalism I can" and the other person who is saying that "I am going to create the journalism that best fits this agenda". And to me the person who is going to try to create the best journalism they can...their work is probably going to be more entertaining, more enjoyable to read, maybe better reported...they are going to care more about the medium they are working in. And so what I would say is that the conservative movement, if it really wants to change the game, it has to encourage people who are journalists first and foremost, who buy into what it means to be a journalist and what it is to do good journalistic work and who also happens to be conservative, who also happen to have conservative or libertarian sympathies and who understand the value of libertarian and conservative ideas.

WH: Do you think we are going to get past this place where I think we are right now...where you have many conservatives trying to say that people like Rod Dreher or Ross Douthat aren't true conservatives? Is it going to take another bad election for people to get past that or do you see some things that are happening now where people are starting to think "Maybe we need to think about how to actually influence the discussion rather than just fire up the base"?

CF: I don't know what's going to happen on that front. I live in Orange County....I should say I grew up in Orange County...and I spend a lot of time here....my parents still live here. It's a very conservative place...I have tons of conservative friends and family members and when I talk to them, they aren't really trying to drum heretics out...nor are they themselves saying "You need to be more conservative"....I think that....this isn't a tactic that is done by your average Republican or your average conservative as much as it is done by talk radio hosts and pundits, who are sort of professionally angry. I think that they often say things to drum up an audience, to drum up a controversy, not because they think that it is actually the direction you need to go going forward but because if you call someone a heretic, you sort of seem like you elevate yourself....you make yourself a true conservative. If everyone thinks of Rush Limbaugh as the one true conservative then it's good for his audience numbers. So I think that we have to stop falling for that, we have to start calling people who do that out on it and saying, you know, it shouldn't be about a hunt for heretics...it should be about a big tent where you have strategic alliances and if someone is a conservative and there is one thing that they happen to be liberal about, because of their life experiences, because they just think about it in a quirky way...well that's fine...I'm going to work with them on the things I agree with them about...and we are going to have a conversation about the other stuff.

WH: When I think about what you just said, I think one of the big perceived splits within the movement is the split between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. Is that coalition broken or do you think there is still hope for those two groups working together?

CF: I think that there is hope for those groups working together. And I think that...I agree with you that is a split...and that there is tension between those two groups. But I also think that the reality of it is a little bit more gray, it is a little bit messier than that. There are things that I am....generally I would consider myself on sort of the fiscal conservative side of that divide...but there are things that I am socially conservative about, there are things that I am very sympathetic to social conservatives about, and there are things where I disagree with fiscal conservatives. I think that people don't fall very neatly into boxes....if you really start talking to anyone, of any political ideology, it's very rare that you can say this is what this person is, this kind of conservative or this kind of liberal. I think that that's a good thing, that people think for themselves...that they are quirky and not doctrinaire because that's the only way you avoid falling into the trap of following an ideology over a cliff.

WH: Let me follow up with one last question before we end. One of the things I've really focused on my website over the past three or four years has been this idea of seeking at least dialog between people on either side...and not just in the conservative movement but people on the left and on the right....it's nothing new, it's been going on for a long time....it seems like a lot of the partisan rhetoric has been ratcheted up so much through the Bush years and now continuing with Obama...and sometimes I wonder...is there really any place for us to have common ground between those on the left and on the right?

CF: I think that there are fewer and fewer places to do that...but they do still exist. The Atlantic is one place I have done a lot of work for and I think it is a great example of a national magazine that...it's motto is "Of No Party or Clique"...you really can see writers coming at the problems that America faces and interesting topics from different perspectives....it's unpredictable and I think it does a good job of highlighting different voices and giving people a place to write even if they don't fit into a box very well. I think BloggingHeadsTV is another favorite of mine...I've done some work for them too and I think they do a good job of pairing people up from different ideologies and perspectives and letting them go head to head in a way that is intellectually honest. And there are of course other examples too and I would just encourage people to try and patronize outlets like that and try and start outlets of their own that do that. And if we can pay attention to those places and participate in their conversation as opposed to spending all of our time on FoxNews or MSNBC, depending on if you are liberal or conservative....I think we would all be better off.

WH: Tell us where we can find your writing these days.

CF: These days I am writing most often at The American Scene. I've got a couple other projects coming up but anything I do I will announce it there.