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By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Republicans — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Comes now Niall Ferguson to assure all of us Republicans that if we lose this year's Presidential election, it would actually be good for us somehow. I've heard this argument--or its derivative--before, of course, but let's pay it attention yet again. Read on.

Fourteen years ago, in another English-speaking country, an unpopular and in many respects incompetent conservative leader secured re-election by the narrowest of margins and against the run of opinion polls. His name was John Major, and his subsequent period in office, marred as it was by a staggering range of economic, diplomatic and political errors of judgment, doomed the British Conservative Party to (so far) seven years in the political wilderness. I say "so far" because the damage done to the Tories' reputation by the Major government of 1992-97 was such that there is still no sign whatsoever of its ever returning to power.

Many Conservatives today would now agree that it would have been far better for their party if Mr. Major had lost the election of 1992. For one thing, the government deserved to lose. The decision to take the United Kingdom into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism had plunged the British economy into a severe recession, characterized by a painful housing market bust. For another, the Labour candidate for the premiership, Neil Kinnock, had all the hallmarks of a one-term prime minister. It was Mr. Kinnock's weakness as a candidate that enabled Mr. Major to scrape home with a tiny majority of 21 out of 651 seats in the Commons. Had Mr. Kinnock won, the exchange rate crisis of September 1992 would have engulfed an inexperienced Labour government, and the Conservatives, having replaced Mr. Major with a more credible leader, could have looked forward to an early return to office.

Instead, the next five years were a kind of Tory dance of death, in which the party not only tore itself apart over Europe, but also helped to tear Bosnia apart by refusing all assistance to those resisting Serbian aggression. Meanwhile, a spate of petty sexual and financial scandals discredited one minister after another, making a mockery of Mr. Major's call for a return to traditional family values ("Back to Basics"). All of this provided the perfect seedbed for the advent of New Labour and the election by a landslide of Tony Blair in May 1997. Well, Mr. Blair is still in Downing Street and, having weathered the worst of the political storm over Iraq, seems likely to remain there for some years to come.

This analogy is flawed. Unlike the Tories, the Republicans are not riven over major issues like the Exchange Rate Mechanism, or standing up to foreign aggression, or sexual and financial scandals. Ferguson makes clear throughout the essay that his objection to the Bush Administration is over issues of policy, but he fails to show how any particular policies are driving Republicans apart in the manner that policy differences drove Tories apart.

Then we have this:

The obvious retort is that American politics is not British politics. No? Go back half a century, to 1956, and recall the events that led up to the re-election of another Republican incumbent. Sure, Eisenhower didn't have much in common personally with George W. Bush, except perhaps the relaxed work rate. But Ike was no slouch when it came to regime change. In 1953 a CIA-sponsored coup in Iran installed as dictator Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In 1954 Ike enunciated the "domino theory," following the defeat of France in Vietnam and invaded Guatemala to install another pro-American dictator. In 1955 he shelled the Chinese isles of Quemoy and Matsu.

Yet Eisenhower's refusal to back the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt following Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, and his acquiescence in the Soviet invasion of Hungary, should have alerted American voters to the lack of coherence in his strategy. Predictably, Ike's re-election was followed by a string of foreign-policy reverses--not least the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, Castro's takeover of Cuba and the shooting down of Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union. These were the setbacks that lent credibility to JFK's hawkish campaign in 1960: And Kennedy's victory handed the rest of the decade to the Democrats.

So let's see if we can follow Ferguson's reasoning. It appears to be as follows: (1) If a Republican administration follows a policy of regime change, then (2) the policy will be shot through with incoherence thus leading to (3) Democratic dominance for the next decade in the White House.

Forgive me for not buying this. John F. Kennedy did not win the 1960 election by being more hawkish than Eisenhower. He won it by portraying himself as being at least equally hawkish as candidate Richard Nixon, which is a far different thing. Additionally, there were other factors that led to Nixon's defeat--his poor television personality, Kennedy's ostensibly more vigorous and energetic campaign and personality, the failure of Eisenhower to campaign for Nixon as much as he could have, etc. Ferguson does a poor job controlling for these other factors, which detracts tremendously from the ability of his argument to persuade.

Ferguson assures Republicans that John Kerry is a weak candidate--just like Neil Kinnock (the British Labour Party leader in 1992) was, and therefore, that he is fated to serving only one term as President. How he comes to this conclusion is a mystery. Many Democrats consoled themselves after the 2000 election, believing that George W. Bush was fated to only be a one term President, but here he is, with a fighting (and some might say excellent) chance at being able to serve another four years. Many Republicans consoled themselves after 1992 in believing that Bill Clinton would only serve one term as President. That believe was only strengthened by the disastrous performance of the Clinton Administration in its first two years, and with the election of Republicans to majorities in both houses of Congress in 1994. You know what happened next.

The object of serious political parties is to win elections, and to be able to govern effectively. Republicans, being members of a serious political party, cannot therefore paralyze themselves--ourselves--with "what if" questions about how a loss might actually be a win, while a win could only be Pyrrhic. Our job is to win this election and in doing so, win the trust of the American people in our ability to govern. Then we have to go out and validate that trust. A hard task, to be sure, but one eminently more worthy and worthwhile than throwing an election on the basis of a hope and a whim--the way Niall Ferguson appears to urge Republicans to do.

UPDATE: Reader Jay Hightower refers me to this page with the following comments:

Ferguson teaches history at Harvard? His Opinion Journal article states that: "In 1955 he (Ike) shelled the Chinese isles of Quemoy and Matsu." This is wrong; Chinese Nationalists (and their U.S. advisors) occupied the islands and the Chinese Communists did the shelling.

To say the least, this is an embarrassing oversight on Ferguson's part.