Margaret Hoover - American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party

Copyright 2011 by Margaret Hoover

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN FORUM with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoover, Margaret.
American individualism : how a new generation of conservatives can save the Republican Party/
Margaret Hoover.
p. cm.
1. Republican Party (U.S.: 1854 ) 2. ConservatismUnited States.
3. Generation YUnited States. I. Title.
JK2356.H66 2011
324.2734dc22 2011008362

eISBN: 978-0-307-71817-4

Jacket design by Jean Traina
Jacket photograph by Deborah Feingold

v3.1

For my husband, John Avlon,
the love of my life

This book has its origins in a lightning-strike moment I experienced during the presidential campaign of 2004. At the time I was just another bubbly young junior staffer, still savoring my good fortune at having secured a position with the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign. I bounded through the halls of the redbrick office building in Arlington, Virginia, that housed President George W. Bushs campaign headquarters. After a morning staff meeting, I decided to swing by my office-mates desk, tucked in a corner facing south toward the Potomac River, with a clear view of Georgetown and the rest of Washington, D.C. She was a coordinator in the political department, and that morning she seemed troubled.

Look, she said, pointing to supporting documents that spelled out what became known as the anti-same-sex-marriage strategy.

The regional political directors of President Bushs campaign had been tasked with ensuring that battleground states sponsored ballot initiatives defining marriage exclusively as a union of one man and one woman, thus prohibiting same-sex marriage. As an additional measure to boost political enthusiasm, President Bush would ask Congress to pass an amendment to the Constitution that would federally define all marriages as being between a man and a woman. President Bushs plan was to campaign in these battleground states in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, in a joint effort with statewide candidates to energize social conservatives, who, it was feared, might otherwise not come out to vote. While they were in the voting booth casting a ballot against same-sex marriage, the thinking went, they would also pull the lever for candidate George W. Bush, the man for whom I worked.

That moment remains vivid in my memory. After an instant of confusion, I felt a wave of disappointment crash over me. A series of questions raced through my mind: Why on earth did the campaign care about defining marriage as being between a man and a woman? Did President Bush really believe it was important to make laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians? Was this strategy necessary to ensure the presidents reelection? Did President Bush think that mobilizing people against gay rights was a good thing? I looked up from the papers on my office-mates desk and stared out through the window over the treetops toward the nations capital, feeling sick to my stomach.

That was my Ms.-Hoover-Goes-to-Washington moment. I suddenly realized as never before that the Republican Partymy partywas falling seriously out of step with a rising generation of Americans. These up-and-coming young voters value the ideal of individual freedom when it comes to gay rights, as they value some degree of reproductive freedom. And they do not support conservative activists hard-line positions on immigration and environmentalism. It was on these questions, I felt, that the Republican Party was turning young voters away. In the years since 2004, the problem has only worsened. Unless the party can connect with a younger generation and, at the same time, offer solutions to meet the challenges of modern America, it is destined to remain at best a minority partyor worse, to fade into irrelevance. That would be tragic, because a modern brand of American conservatism is more urgently needed now than ever before.

Today, the United States faces a daunting array of challenges that threaten to imperil the American dream. Skyrocketing deficits and debt that amount to generational theft are staking a claim to the future prosperity of the youngest Americans. Our economy has lost its vibrancy, a quality that is increasingly associated with our less democratic trading partners in foreign markets. Americas status as a world leader has diminished at a time when the worlds most volatile region, the Middle East, is in a state of upheaval and the threat of Islamic supremacy looms. A failure to reconcile our twin needs for secure borders and new immigrants has led us into a protracted and divisive immigration crisis. Our schools, rather than facilitating equality of opportunity, increasingly constrict the upward mobility of young people. Americas challenges all have one thing in common: They will likely be with us for a long time, and the next generation of Americans will have to solve them, or face American decline.

I believe that the next generation of Americansthe first to come of age in the new millenniumunderstands our situation well. The millennials, born roughly between the years 1980 and 1999, perceive our political system at an impasse. They fear that as a nation we are incapable of addressing our problems. From every corner, they hear exhausted ideological rhetoric and see political gamesmanship at the expense of practical solutions.

Millennials thought they had found a candidate to break through the rhetorical divisions and excuses for inaction when they voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008. They believed they were electing a man who, as he had promised, would bring change to Washington. His rhetoric spoke to their desire to move beyond the partisan divide of red states and blue states, to unify the country in order to solve problems. They have been disappointed.

As a result, millennials have yet to solidly commit to a political party. As a group, they are confident, open to change, globally oriented, techno-savvy, hyperconnected, and 50 million strong. By political orientation, the largest bloc are Independents, followed by Democrats, with Republicans a distant third. Though likely to call themselves liberal, millennials are not proponents of the big-government orthodoxy of modern liberalism. And yet, they are socially liberal, adhering to the least traditional views of family, homosexuality, and gender roles. In this sense, they are passionate about expanding individual freedom. They also have idealistic expectations about what government can and should do, and are optimistic about the competence of their elected leaders.

Yet the millennials also demonstrate decidedly conservative tendencies, even though relatively few call themselves Republicans. They show signs of fiscal conservatism and cherish individual freedom, self-expression, and the ability to choose their own way in life. They have favorable attitudes toward business and individual entrepreneurship and are less likely than their parents to say that the government should take on more debt in order to help those in need.

Some might call them fiscally conservative but socially liberal. They are ripe for a political party to come along and make the case for maximum freedom, fiscal responsibility, equality of opportunity, social mobility, individual responsibility, and service to community and country. They are likely to frustrate the ambitions of old-line political purists, because they do not fit neatly into the traditional partisan or ideological boxes.