Obama, Conservative "Trimmer"

Andrew Sullivan makes the case that Barack Obama is more conservative, in the classic tradition of Michael Oakeshott, than his GOP critics in The Daily Dish.

What the conservative is about, in other words, is balance. And that's why Oakeshott's famous metaphor for the kind of politician he admired was a "trimmer." And one of his treasured works of political writing was Halifax's sadly neglected "The Character Of A Trimmer". Today we regard a trimmer as a flip-flopper. But a trimmer in the nautical sense was a man simply tasked with trimming the sails and balancing the weight of a ship to ensure, as different winds prevailed, that the ship stayed upright and on an even keel. The role of the conservative statesman is, in Oakeshott's sense, to do the same thing - sometimes expanding government in discrete ways to ameliorate or adjust to new circumstances; sometimes restricting it for the same reasons.

What Bush and Cheney then did to the system in panicked response to the emergency of 9/11 - a massive and radical attack on constitutional norms, a conflation of religious certainty and government, and a huge expansion of government power and spending - requires now a very intense period of Halifax-style balancing. Obama's moderation may, in fact, not be radical enough on Oakeshottian grounds. For trimming is not about always finding the middle option. It is about restoring balance, which may sometimes mean radicalism if it is preceded by serious imbalance...This is a prudential task, not a theoretical one (the other core conservative insight). And we should judge this president and his opponents on the wisdom of their prudential decisions and positions. So far, it seems to me, Obama is the only game in town. Whether his judgment is right will only be determined by history. But his instincts, it seems to me, are genuinely that of a trimmer...In the best possible sense of that term.

Terms such as "liberal" and "conservative" have been used so often and so incorrectly that they have lost their original meaning. That is how conservatives (in the classic sense of the term) such as Sullivan have become pariahs in the modern GOP. Whether you agree with him or not, Sully provides thought-provoking commentary rich in historical context.

--Ballard Burgher