Max Boot - The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

THE CORROSION OF CONSERVATISM

Why I Left the Right

MAX BOOT

LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

A DIVISION OF W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

NEW YORK LONDON

To Robert Weil,
Editor Extraordinaire

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky

W. H. Auden,
September 1, 1939 (1939)

N OVEMBER 8, 2016, WAS ONE OF THE MOST DEMORALIZING days of my life. It was also, in ways that have become impossible to ignore, devastating not just for America in general but for American conservatism in particular.

I had never imagined that Donald Trump could be elected president. If you had suggested to me before 2016 that such a thing was possible I would have replied that it was too far-fetched to contemplateit sounded like the plot of a dystopian science-fiction movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been a more plausible presidentand he wasnt even born in America. I didnt think Trump would win a single Republican primary. Sure, he had been polling strongly in 2015, but I figured that when the actual balloting began my fellow Republicans would sober up and realize that the reality TV star and real-estate mogul was not remotely qualified for the nations highest office.

Trump had offended my sensibilities from the very first day of the campaign, June 16, 2015, when he had come down the garish escalator at Trump Tower to castigate Mexican immigrants in crudely xenophobic terms. Theyre bringing drugs, he said. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

There was no possibility, I figured, that the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan would endorse Trump for president. Was there?

When the primaries began and Trump began winning state after state, I thought I had entered The Twilight Zone. The torment worsened when he locked up the nomination and Republican after Republican dutifully lined up to endorse his candidacy after having lambasted him in the harshest terms possible. Former governor Rick Perry had called Trump a cancer on conservatism before endorsing said cancerand being rewarded with a cabinet post. Former governor Bobby Jindal had called Trump a madman who must be stopped before endorsing said madman. Senator Rand Paul had called him a delusional narcissist before endorsing said narcissist. Most painful of all for me, Senator Marco Rubio, whose presidential campaign I had served as a foreign policy adviser, went from denouncing Trump as a con artist to endorsing said con artist. House Speaker Paul Ryan got my hopes up by hesitating to endorse Trump, but in the end, he too bent the knee. This was not the Republican Party I knew. Or thought I knew. How could so many Republicans for whom I had such respect have betrayed everything that theyand Ibelieved in? What was going on? How could all of these conservatives turn into Trump toadies? I was angry and bewildered. My faith in the Republican Party was shaken and has never recovered.

But at least I comforted myself that in the general election there was no way the American people could possibly elect someone like Trump. I had come to America as a six-year-old from the Soviet Union in 1976 and had grown to revere the country that had offered asylum to my family. I was convinced that America was the greatest and most selfless country in the world. Now I had faith that the voters would in their wisdom choose Hillary Clinton, who was a deeply flawed and seriously uncharismatic candidate, to be sure, but also extremely knowledgeable, resolutely centrist, and amply qualified. I had never voted for a Democrat in my life, but for me it was an easy call. Here I was, a conservative Republican, voting for Clinton; I figured that there would be plenty of others who would do the same. If Trump couldnt even count on the undivided support of the GOP, there was no way he could win.

Like countless other commentators, I was sure Trump was finished on October 7, 2016, when a videotape emerged in which he could be heard bragging that because he was a star he could do anything he wanted to womeneven grab them by the pussy. Numerous Republicans withdrew their endorsements and urged Trump to drop out. Yet when he refused to withdraw, many of the same Republicans came crawling back to re-endorse him. The race tightened as Election Day approached. Yet I was still certainfoolishly, navely, pathetically certainthat Trump could not win. My Pollyannaish faith in America had blinded me to what was to come, and that faith has not survived the debacle to come.

I agreed to spend election night at the Comedy Cellar nightclub in downtown New York, offering commentary on the results along with other pundits and comedians at a forum organized by Foreign Policy magazine. I was nervous in the afternoon but was reassured by rumors that the exit polls showed a Clinton victory. I was on stage, chatting with the other panelists, when around 8 p.m. I saw my partner, Sue, growing increasingly agitated across the room. She kept looking at her phone and getting more upset. I sneaked out my own phone and saw what was disturbing herthe New York Times had just moved Florida into Trumps column. It now looked as if he had a path to victory. As the night wore on, swing state after swing state went for Trump. Clinton went from the odds-on favorite to an increasing long shot.

By the time Sue and I got home to our apartment on the Upper West Side at 10 p.m. or so, it was obvious that the unthinkable was about to become the inevitable: Donald Trump was going to be elected the 45th president of the United States. A friend came over from the Clinton election-night party at the Javits Center; she was crying and in shock. I swilled a Scotch and took some sleeping pillssomething I dont normally doand tried to sleep. And, yes, I know youre not supposed to combine sedatives with alcohol, but youre also not supposed to elect a bigoted bully as president of the United States. This was a day for disregarding the rules. Even with chemical inducements, however, my sleep was fretful and disturbed because I knew that I would awaken to a nightmare. My America had become Trumps America. My Republican Party had become Trumps party. My conservative movement had become Trumps movement.

The first thing I did the next morningthe dawn of what I felt was a new annus horribiliswas to go online and change my voter registration. I had been a Republican since turning eighteen just before the 1988 presidential election. Now, at the age of forty-seven, I became an independent. Politics is a team sport. Suddenly I was without a team. I was politically homeless. In an instant I felt alienated from some of my oldest friends and fellow travelersconservatives with whom I had been in one fight after another over the past quarter-century. How was it possible that 90 percent of Republicans had supported a charlatan who had only recently been a Democrat and who had few fixed convictions outside of narcissism and nativism, racism and sexism? My sense of alienation has only deepened as I have watched the Trump presidency in action. No other president has been more hostile to the values of conservatism as I conceived it.