A Week of Ideas and Anguish

Last Wednesday I flew to Washington D.C. for a busy APSA meeting--I presented a paper (one version of which you can find here), chaired the aforementioned discussion about conservatism with fellow bloggers Henry, Scott, and John (we hope to get their papers, plus our discussant's comments, up on Crooked Timber fairly soon), and served as a discussant myself on a panel on early 20th-century Chinese liberalism, which I probably sweated more about than any other event from the whole four days. (I don't think I've so much as thought about Sun Yat-sen, much less read anything about him, since I was getting my M.A., over a decade ago.) Plus interviews, plus meetings, etc. It was a very busy and engaging few days, as APSA always is for me. I know academics who get burned out on conferences, and perhaps someday I will as well, but so far I still crave them--they're where I get my batteries recharged, where I get jazzed on the latest argument or insight or publication. I'm lucky that I've been able to attend as often as I have.

Lucky--now there's an understatement. There I was, along with a few thousand of my professional peers, hanging around a couple of hotels in D.C., buying books, swapping stories, arguing over papers and drinks, going out to dinner. But not just that--because whenever there was a free moment, in the mornings or evenings or during the day, people were talking about Katrina and New Orleans, crowding around the TVs to watch the latest horrifying footage. Flooding, starvation, fires, chaos, violence, despair, disease, and massive, massive incompetence. It was the topic of almost every non-profession-related conversation I overheard or participated in; and in fact became the topic, either explicitly or implicitly, of more than a few of those discussions as well.

Two of such stand out. On Thursday I got together with Damon Linker, an old friend and our discussant for the conservatism panel on Friday. He told me about the David Brooks column from that morning, with its invocations of terrible, catastrophic floods from America's past (the Johnston, PA, flood in 1889; the hurricane which destroyed Galveston, TX, in 1900; and most importantly the awesome Mississippi flood of 1927), and the huge, and hugely unpredictable, consequences they have had on the socio-economic fabric--and the political leadership--of the country. He ended that column writing:

"[F]loods are also civic examinations. Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster--tales of sudden death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease--there is also the testing. Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come."

While talking about this over our snacks, watching CNN out of the corner of our eyes, my friend predicted the end of Bush. His approval ratings will be at 35% or lower within two weeks, and won't recover. The Democrats will be able to hang so much on him that it'll take a massive blunder on their part for Bush's record not to create a huge opening for them in 2008.

I was thinking about that discussion when, Saturday morning, I checked out a panel discussion on progressive politics in the U.S., with presentations by Rogers Smith and Bill Galston, and comments from Jeffrey Isaac. Each presented some fascinating information and controversial opinions; a great discussion overall. But what really stood out to me was Isaac's apparent lack of confidence in any of these devastating events to actually translate into reform or any kind of progressive political action at all. He said he certainly hoped heads would roll, that the voting public would respond productively to these terrible visuals of poverty, disarray, and finger-pointing . . . but he doubted it would happen. Instead he feared, he said, that the majority of American citizens have become so convinced of their isolation from, or so settled in their opinions about, public life that they simply couldn't be roused, much less led to demand accountability from, their (mostly Republican) leaders. President Bush will hug people and try to come up with money he's directed to be spent elsewhere, FEMA Director Michael Brown will talk about how hard he's trying, the libertarians will tell you that the government couldn't possibly have done any better anyway, and soon the masses will be led on to the next media event. (Katrina? That's old news. Yes, yes, all the refugees are starving in the Houston Astrodome, we know. But hey, Rehnquist died! Hit the Senate lights; it's confirmation time.)

I don't know which it'll be. Brooks's latest suggests that we are at the "bursting point," and that even Republicans are "mad as hell" at an administration which has systematically, if unintentionally, underfunded and misdirected the federal government's ability to fulfill its most basic responsibility: collectively providing security and aid at a time of crisis. Laura thinks that David is right: that no one "can seriously talk about small government now"; that "perhaps this will lead to more consciousness of the poor in their own backyard"; that seeing as how "one of the major accusations of the relief effort was that troops couldn't be sent in to Jefferson Parish, because they were in Falluja," we can be certain that popular support for the war in Iraq has probably ended overnight. I hope she's right. Certainly Brooks's columns are exactly the sort of thing which Timothy Burke ("I do honestly beg your pardon for saying so to those of you who are regular Republican voters, because I know you're not necessarily at all the same as the people who now represent your party on the national stage . . . [but if] you can't be bothered to draw the line between your decency and the screaming indecency of your leadership, then what's the point?") and Henry Farrell ("Bush and his friends and supporters tell us that they're conservatives. Conservatism, if it has any moral content at all, is supposed to be a political philosophy of values, of taking responsibility for one's actions and inactions. Not press conference spin, blame shifting and Potemkin relief efforts.") have been eloquently pleading for over the past few days. But does Bush read Brooks? More pertinently, do Republican voters? I think Damon was probably right at least insofar as that there's probably a couple of weeks worth of a window open, at most, for such anger to coalesce and have consequences. If his prediction isn't born out in that time, I fear Jeffrey's may be the more accurate one after all.