Not a Victory in Sight by Fareed Zakaria

November 16, 1998, U.S. Edition

Not a Victory in Sight
It's a global trend. Conservative political parties keep winning policy debates and then losing popular elections.
By Fareed Zakaria

It might be a comfort to Republicans to realize that they are not alone. During the past three years, the conservative governments in Europe's four largest countries have all lost elections to left-wing parties. The result: with the exception of Spain, every major country in Western Europe is now run by a left-of-center party -- Labour in England, the socialists in France and Italy and the Social Democrats in Germany. Indeed, the Italian and French governments are backed by communists. Even Sweden, which flirted with a rightward move after decades of socialism, reverted to its Social Democrats in its last election.

This trend is particularly surprising because most countries in the West are adopting conservative policies. From balanced budgets to tight money to welfare reform to higher educational standards, there is wide-spread popular support for ideas and programs associated for decades with conservative parties. This support is more grudging in continental Europe than in Britain and the United States, but it is still real. Bill Clinton, a well-greased political weather vane, was reflecting this reality when he declared in 1995 that "the era of big government is over." So, in this environment, why is it the right that is in trouble?

Actually it often happens that when a party's ideas are triumphant it ends up faring poorly in national elections. By the late 1940s, left-of-center ideas dominated policy-making in the Western world. With memories of the Great Depression and World War II fresh in the public mind, a consensus had emerged favoring government regulation of the economy, a welfare state, pensions, unemployment benefits, fixed exchange rates, etc.

But consider who was in power by the 1950s. Eisenhower in Washington, Harold Macmillan, a high Tory, in London and de Gaulle and Adenauer, both staunch conservatives, in Paris and Boon. The electorate wanted right-wing parties implementing left-wing policies -- probably assuming that this would soften socialism's edges. Today, after the failures of the 1960s and 1970s, fears of excessive government regulation and intervention and memories of stagflation are still strong. The trend is in the direction of deregulation, economic liberalization and free-market reforms. But people seem more comfortable having these policies undertaken by social democrats -- perhaps hoping it will result in a kinder, gentler conservatism. It is also a sign of a middle-class electorate's desire for moderation and gradual change.

The rightward movement of left-wing parties has created a problem for conservatives. How do you differentiate yourself, say, from Tony Blair's "New Labour" party if he adopts fiscal restraint, welfare reform, strong law enforcement and school discipline as key elements of his political platform? In some places -- Germany and Italy, for example -- this has left the old Christian Democrats utterly bereft of ideas.

In other countries conservatives have felt forced to abandon their mainstream agenda -- who wants to be a "me too" party? -- and talk only about those issues that now differentiate them from the left. These issues, by definition, comprise the most conservative elements of the conservative agenda -- such as abortion, homosexuality and social conservatism in the United States. The incentive for radicalism affects the tone of politics as much as the content. The Republican Party, comfortable with the habits of a minority party -- divisive rhetoric and hardball tactics -- has not adjusted to the fact that it is now the majority party. The GOP therefore finds it difficult to be the party of governance, mushy rhetoric, coalitions and compromise.

In foreign policy, conservatives feel that somehow they must outflank the government, no matter where this takes them. It has not been enough for Britain's Tories to be mildly skeptical about the European Monetary Union. After all, Tony Blair's government is mildly skeptical about the euro. In their zeal to outdo him, the Tories are becoming the party of radical rejectionism of the euro. It is not enough for the Republicans to seek the containment of Saddam Hussein; Bill Clinton does so as well. They want nothing less than military intervention, an idea more useful in rhetoric than reality.

There is a parallel between Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, and not the one usually made nowadays. Liberals in the early 1970s faced a difficult prospect: how to oppose a conservative Republican president who founded the Environmental Protection Agency, massively expanded affirmative action, announced that "we are all Keynesians now" and instituted wage and price controls? Richard Nixon's policies had turned out to be well within the liberal consensus of the time. As a result, liberal democrats -- many of whom hated him for his past -- turned their fury on Nixon personally. Similarly today, conservatives face the most conservative Democrat to occupy the White House since Grover Cleveland. Clinton's only major policies -- balancing the budget and welfare reform -- are decidedly right-of-center, as are many of his minor ones -- school uniforms, more police officers, government reform. The depth of the animus against Clinton's (decidedly shoddy) character surely reflects this frustration.

The liberal attack on Nixon succeeded because of Watergate. But this is one case where history will not repeat itself. Conservatives in America and abroad will have to reinvent themselves in light of their ideological success. Otherwise, having won the debates they will keep losing the elections.