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OP-ED
THE NEW YORK TIMES FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2008
For years, American and British poli-
tics were in sync. Reagan came in
roughly the same time as Thatcher, and
Clinton’s Third Way approach mirrored
Blair’s. But the British conservatives
never had a Gingrich revolution in the
1990s or the Bush victories thereafter.
They got their losing in early, and, in the
wilderness, they rethought modern con-
servatism while their American coun-
terparts were clinging to power.
Today, British conservatives are on
the way up, while American conserva-
tives are on the way down. British con-
servatives have moved beyond Thatch-
erism, while American conservatives
pine for another Reagan. The British
Conservative Party enjoyed a series of
stunning victories in local elections last
week, while polls show American voters
thoroughly rejecting the Republican
brand.
The flow of ideas has changed di-
rection. It used to be that American con-
servatives shaped British political
thinking. Now the influence is going the
other way.
The British conservative renovation
begins with this insight: The central po-
litical debate of the 20th century was
over the role of government. The right
stood for individual freedom while the
left stood for extending the role of the
state. But the central debate of the 21st
century is over quality of life. In this
new debate, it is necessary but insuffi-
cient to talk about individual freedom.
Political leaders have to also talk about,
as one Tory politician put it, “the whole
way we live our lives.”
That means, first, moving beyond the
Thatcherite tendency to put economics
first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the lead-
ing Tory strategists put it: “Politics,
once econo-centric, must now become
socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Con-
servative Party leader, makes it clear
that his primary focus is sociological.
Last year he declared: “The great chal-
lenge of the 1970s and 1980s was eco-
nomic revival. The great challenge in
this decade and the next is social re-
vival.” In another speech, he argued:
smaller, decentralized and interactive.
They want a greater variety of schools,
with local and parental control. They
want to reverse the trend toward big
central hospitals. Health care, Cameron
says, is as much about regular long-
term care as major surgery, and pa-
tients should have the power to con-
struct relationships with caretakers,
pharmacists and local facilities.
Cameron also believes government
should help social entrepreneurs scale
up their activities without burdening
them with excessive oversight.
This focus means that Conservatives
talk not only about war and G.D.P., but
also the softer stuff. There’s been more
emphasis on environmental issues, ci-
vility, assimilation and the moral cli-
mate. Cameron has spent an enormous
amount of time talking about marriage,
families and children.
Some of his ideas would not sit well
with American conservatives. He wants
to create 4,200 more health visitors, who
would come into the homes of new par-
ents and help them manage day-to-day
stress. But he also talks about rewriting
the tax code to make it more family
friendly, making child care more ac-
cessible, and making the streets safer.
Some of this is famously gauzy, and
Cameron is often disdained as a mere
charmer. But politically it works. The
Tory modernization project has pro-
duced stunning support in London, the
southern suburbs, the Welsh heartlands
and the ailing north. It’s not only that
voters are tired of Labor. The Conserva-
tives have successfully “decontaminat-
ed” their brand. They’re offering some-
DAVID BROOKS
The Conservative Revival
No, not here.
Across
the Atlantic.
The fight for the Democratic nomina-
tion seems to be winding down. It’s not
completely over, but the odds now over-
whelmingly favor Barack Obama.
Assuming that Mr. Obama is the nomi-
nee, he’ll lead a party that, judging by the
usual indicators, should be poised for an
easy victory — perhaps even a landslide.
Yet Democrats are worried. Are those
worries justified?
Before I try to answer that question,
let’s talk about those indicators.
Political scientists, by and large, be-
lieve that what happens on the campaign
trail, while it gives talking heads some-
thing to talk about, is more or less irrele-
vant to what happens on Election Day.
Instead, they place their faith in statis-
tical analyses that identify three main de-
terminants of presidential voting.
First, votes are affected by the state of
the economy — mainly economic per-
formance in the year or so preceding the
election.
Second, the approval rating of the cur-
rent president strongly affects his party’s
ability to hold power.
Third, the electorate seems to suffer
from an eight-year itch: parties rarely
manage to hold the White House for
more than two terms in a row.
This year, all of these factors strongly
favor the Democrats. Indeed, the Demo-
cratic Party hasn’t enjoyed this favorable
a political environment since 1964. Rob-
ert Erikson, a political scientist at Colum-
bia, tells me: “It would be difficult to find
any serious indicator that does not point
to a Democratic victory in 2008.”
What about polls that still seem to give
John McCain a good chance of winning?
Pay no attention, say the experts: gen-
eral election polls this early tell you al-
most nothing about what will happen in
November. Remember 1992: as late as
PAUL KRUGMAN
Thinking
About
November
By Susan Faludi
SAN FRANCISCO
NOTABLE in the Indiana and
North Carolina primary re-
sults and in many recent
polls are signs of a change in
the gender weather: white
men are warming to Hillary Clinton — at
least enough to vote for her. It’s no small
shift. These men have historically been
her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion
may point less to a new kind of male voter
than to a new kind of female vote-getter.
Pundits have been quick to attribute the
to her new role with a Thelma-like relish.
We are witnessing a female competitor
delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her
new no-holds-barred pugnacity and glee-
ful perseverance have revamped her im-
age in the eyes of begrudging white male
voters, who previously saw her as the
sanctioning “sivilizer,” a political Aunt
Polly whose goody-goody directives made
them want to head for the hills.
It’s the unforeseen precedent of an un-
precedented candidacy: our first major fe-
male presidential candidate isn’t doing
what men always accuse women of doing.
She’s not summoning the rules committee
over every infraction. (Her attempt to re-
write the rules for Michigan and Florida
are less a timeout than rough play.) Not
once has she demanded that the umpire
stop the fight. Indeed, she’s asking for
more unregulated action, proposing a de-
bate with no press-corps intermediaries.
If anyone has been guarding the rules
this election, it’s been the press, which has
KIM BOST
The Fight
Stuff
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