pragmatism

‘David French–ism’ without David French

French has been unfairly caricatured — but the caricature is worth defending.

Near as I can tell, the David French controversy revolves around allegations that the man is too much of an accommodating pragmatist on social issues. The charge is amusing to me, given that one of my defining experiences here at NR occurred when French denounced a column I wrote last year about the need for conservatives to pragmatically accommodate transgender Americans.

I don’t bear David any ill will over that. Conservatives can read our dueling articles and reach their own conclusions over whose case is more convincing. But I trust the episode does illustrate the degree to which the real-world David French is quite distinct from Sohrab Ahmari’s depiction in First Things: a man uncritically enthusiastic to accept the “pagan and libertine” so long as “traditional Christians [are] granted spaces in which to practice and preach what they sincerely believe” in return.

As Argentina’s longtime dictator Juan Perón entered his later years, many of his onetime followers sought to sever the increasingly unpopular president from the ideology he was associated with. “Perónism without Perón!” was their curious cry for revolution. Without implying any unflattering analogies, this idea occurred to me while reading Ahmari’s piece. “David French–ism” of the sort Ahmari angrily decries struck me as a perfectly defensible philosophy — even if David French himself may not be its best embodiment.

Many of the things Ahmari asserts French “sees” or “views” or “embodies” about the American political order are not French’s opinions, but the Constitution’s. It is that document, not French, that acknowledges the free exercise of religion as a fundamental American right, while also acknowledging the existence of many other liberties against which it must be balanced.

Ahmari at one point quotes Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who complains that since religious beliefs can’t be “rationally defended,” they are easily “treated as a form of prejudice” by unbelievers. Sam Harris is fond of making a similar but peppier point, that everyone is an atheist about someone else’s religion. Such harsh truths form an unavoidable reality of religion in a diverse democracy — its persuasiveness as political argument cannot be taken for granted. Anyone who is upset, as Ahmari is, that their “orthodoxy” has not triumphed in America must learn to accept this fact.

To the degree that America’s permissive public policy on sexual and gender matters has a single cause, it is the unmoving nature of religiously inspired arguments within a secular legal and political system. Some flatter themselves, believing that ideas such as gay marriage have triumphed only because of a radical conspiracy of far-left social engineers in the judiciary and media. Far less comforting is the possibility that the public-harm arguments of mostly faith-based opponents just weren’t that convincing. The pragmatic religious conservative understands this, which is why the pro-life cause now increasingly makes the case for protecting unborn humans with scientific and medical logic. It accordingly stands as a successful outlier among social conservatism’s many failed culture wars.

It is in the context of a clear-eyed understanding of the limits of religious argument in the American system that the case for “Frenchian” compromise becomes necessary. The religious may lack an ability to dictate public policy according to their view of “the Highest Good,” as Ahmari puts it, but they can find much to value in the Constitution’s guarantee that public policy will not intrude on the individual exercise of their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Now obviously, this promise, like all constitutional promises, is rarely upheld to anyone’s complete satisfaction. Where one American’s right to free exercise of religion begins and the right of another American to be protected from the rules of a faith whose logic they don’t accept is often a complicated calculation. It’s certainly made no easier by a secular Left that increasingly regards religious liberty as something inherently anachronistic and offensive. Whenever this sort of politics makes gains, it deserves to be condemned as anti-constitutional and illiberal, for it is.

But equally illiberal is the other extreme: those who stamp their feet and whine of the unfairness that our courts and laws treat their religious beliefs as merely one public interest among many. In a theocratic system of government, the state is preoccupied with dogma such as the “Highest Good.” But the United States is organized as a religiously neutral republic explicitly uninterested in such projects. Americans are certainly free to dissent from this reality, and decry the Founders for their idiocy in not establishing a divine-right monarchy with a fundamentalist state church, or some other system more inclined to steer the public to a particular path of salvation. Frankly, it would be helpful to all if more writers in the reactionary sphere could muster the courage to state things so bluntly.

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As a philosophy, “David French–ism” — as I’d interpret it, via Ahmari’s essay — means appreciating the balance of liberties demanded by the United States Constitution and concluding that the document’s central promise to protect individual sovereignty has been central to centuries of American success (which is different from American perfection). In forcing the religious conservative to accept religious freedom but not theocratic government, it offers the most practical system yet devised for creating peaceful social order in a diverse society. French-ism as practiced by David French is similar, but is more inclined to take a maximalist view of religious liberty when arguments in favor of affirmatively accommodating the autonomous choices of others are made, as I think his response to my transgender piece attests.

Left-wing anti-French-ism, which argues that religious liberty is inherently worthless and must be sacrificed for mandatory, totalitarian secularism, is an arrogant rejection of the American system. Like Charles Cooke, I have no real clue what exactly the right-wing style of anti-Frenchism favored by Ahmari entails, but to the extent it’s something similarly authoritarian and unconstitutional, it is equally worth rejecting.

Why is Kamala Harris running for president?

In a POLITICO interview, the Democratic hopeful says she wants quick action to put more money in people’s pocketbooks and suggests she’s not interested in big, systemic overhauls.

Joe Biden is offering a return to normalcy. Elizabeth Warren aims to bring big corporations to heel and prop up the working class. Bernie Sanders wants a political revolution.

Kamala Harris’ one-sentence rationale for wanting the presidency is less clear.

Harris, who has now begun fleshing out her policy agenda, told POLITICO in an interview that she’s looking to offer something tangible to voters. She’s pitching herself as the kitchen-table realist of the field, the candidate who eschews lofty speeches and understands the day-to-day financial struggles of regular Americans and, bottom line, wants to put more money in their pockets.

Harris’ plans include big raises for public school teachers, a proposal to pay women equally to men and a tax plan that calls for a $500 monthly credit for families earning less than $100,000 a year. Her paycheck agenda, which one adviser described as a platform of “big tangible solutions,” centers on how Americans are experiencing the economy and is aimed at people whose wages aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living. She’s trying to reach voters who are too often left out of the conversation, with an emphasis on women — and women of color.

Harris said she thinks about the issues she’s taking on in the context of “literally looking at people through the prism of their lives—not some plate glass windows.”

“It’s about solving the problems that keep people up at night,” she said.

“It’s about the value of work and dignity of work and paying people their value — understanding that people are working hard, but they still aren’t able to get through the month and make it with dignity,” Harris added. “And it’s about meeting people where they are.”

Another adviser compared her positioning with the other Democratic candidates more bluntly: Harris is calling for direct payments to families to ease their paycheck-to-paycheck burdens. It’s a simple message they hope will set her apart as a proactive “doer” focused more on delivering immediate results than waiting around for broad, systemic overhauls. “She’s not creating liberal trickle-down policy,” the adviser said. “She’s focused on bottom-line economics, not abstract economics.”

Harris’ big challenge will be breaking through on policy in a way that captivates voters and tells a broader story — about herself, but also what she’s trying to accomplish. Ben LaBolt, a veteran of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, credited Harris’ tough stance against Trump, calling it smart. “Democratic voters are looking for a candidate that can take the fight to Trump and win,” LaBolt said.

He noted that Harris had breakout moments during Judiciary Committee hearings when she grilled then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General William Barr to the point that they appeared to trip over their answers.

But LaBolt suggested it won’t be as easy for Harris to stand out on policy. “As the Clinton campaign learned, it is difficult for pragmatism to match or drown out Trump’s provocation in the headlines — and driving powerful and memorable moments to communicate our message will be more powerful than white papers this cycle,” he said.

Harris is betting that her focus on issues people worry about at “3 a.m.” — “when you wake up in a cold sweat”— will pierce the noise. Her next opportunity in front of a national TV audience comes Tuesday night in an MSNBC town hall in South Carolina. Her faith that the approach will catch on is based partly on her own experience and partly on what she’s heard over and over on the campaign trail.

The teacher pay idea, for example, wasn’t planned as a standalone proposal but turned into one because Harris heard from so many educators.

Harris’ platform has taken shape over several months. She laces her stump speech with statistics and anecdotes diagnosing economic disparities: Nearly half of American families are one unexpected $400 expense away from financial distress, she often says, and in 99 percent of the counties in America, a minimum-wage worker can’t afford market rate price of a one-bedroom apartment.

She describes how her late mother, a breast cancer researcher, sat at the kitchen table and shuffled through bills after Harris and her sister had gone to bed. “She was focused on the demands of what it means to keep all the trains moving on time,” Harris said of her mother, who split with her husband early in her daughters’ lives and took charge of raising the children.

Harris’ policy remedies take a page from Democrats who ran during the 2018 midterm election cylce, when pocketbook issues such as jobs, health care, prescription drug costs and infrastructure resonated with voters in swing districts. Her pitch aims to strike at primary voters who want direct action more than changes that could take generations to bear fruit. She’s keeping it simple and avoiding talk of radical change even when the plans include significant changes to government.

But if she makes it far enough, Trump is certain to yoke Harris to “Medicare for All” and the “Green New Deal,” no matter how she talks about them. She endorsed both proposals early on, amid a rush by some Democratic hopefuls to align with what was thought to be — at least at the time — a sharp leftward turn of the party to align more closely with the energy of the base.

Still, Harris and her team believe she won’t be perceived as a Sanders- or Warren-like figure. They’re hoping her positioning could find favor with — or at least not alienate — voters in a face-off with Trump, who is trying to paint all Democrats as radicals and socialists.

“When I see a tax cut, or teacher pay, or equal pay, those are actually issues that are very important to Democratic primary voters, but also can communicate to swing voters” in the general election, said Neera Tanden, who served as policy director on the campaigns of Obama and Hillary Clinton and is now president of the Center for American Progress. “Democratic primary voters want to see candidates who can appeal to swing voters.”

Harris’ plans call for spending $315 billion over 10 years to boost teacher salaries, which amounts to a raise of $13,500 for the average teacher, a 23 percent increase in base pay. Another plan would mandate that companies prove they aren’t discriminating against women and would fine corporations that don’t close their pay gaps between women and men. If Congress doesn’t act on the gender-pay plan, Harris pledged she would take executive action as president to force federal contractors to comply. She also has promised to take unilateral action on sweeping gun control measures that have stalled in Congress.

A Harris adviser said her upcoming policy plans will fall into three categories:

wages and pay,

bills and the cost of living, and

economic and social justice.

Harris said she also plans to release criminal justice reform and immigration proposals.

Harris has long tried to present herself as pragmatic, particularly on issues in her law enforcement wheelhouse, such as dealing with first-time offenders, tackling human trafficking and negotiating a settlement with big banks during the mortgage crisis. But when she arrived in the Senate two years ago, there were still vast areas where she remained a blank slate. Since then, she’s compiled a portfolio on economic issues that she’s rolled into her presidential campaign.

She’s proposed a tax credit of up to $6,000 a year—$500 a month—to address the rising cost of living, a separate refundable tax credit for people who spend 30 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities and a bill to help low-income families pay for rising sewer and water bills. On health care, Harris is running on Medicare for All, focusing her remarks on the out-of-pocket deductibles more than premiums.

In the interview, Harris sought to ground her policies in a broader governing philosophy. She stressed that Americans’ hardships are largely the result of policies written over many decades and designed to favor the wealthy at the expense of working people. She blamed those in power for the lack of meaningful commitments on more affordable childcare, universal pre-K and paid family leave. Even the tax overhaul Trump signed, Harris said, was pushed by Republican lawmakers and interest groups that long pre-dated Trump.

“The spirit behind the tax bill—that is not new. It’s not an aberration,” Harris said.

“A large part of what I do, and I try to do, is to actually see people,” she added, turning her attention to Trump. “And that requires having some curiosity and concern about the condition of the lives of people other than one’s self. And then when you ask the questions and you hear the stories, seeing what the opportunities are to actually bring solutions.”

Trump Arrived in Davos as a Party Wrecker. He Leaves Praised as a Pragmatist.

But a rough consensus emerged over Mr. Trump’s two-day visit that his administration had shown itself to be more pragmatic than advertised. Many were inclined to view the president’s most extreme positions as just aggressive bargaining postures.

.. “There’s a very constructive mind-set in the Trump administration to find the best path forward,” said Vas Narasimhan, global chief of drug development for Novartis

.. He left the impression that he was above all eager to woo foreign investment, as if he were leading some amped-up American Chamber of Commerce.

.. Economists note that the American economy is into its ninth year of expansion, a trend that speaks to how the aftermath from the 2008 financial crisis has finally run its course.

.. And he gained the unbridled endorsement from the man who heads the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, whose eagerness to flatter his interlocutors is legendary.

.. Whatever the optics of the head of an institution dedicated to reducing economic inequality offering his unqualified support for Mr. Trump’s tax cuts, Mr. Schwab was indeed speaking for business.

The Little-Known Pragmatist Who Is Shaping the Trump Tax Cuts

Mr. Muzinich, a 39-year-old newcomer to Washington, has emerged as a central player in the Trump administration’s tax overhaul effort. The former investment banker and hedge fund manager is the Treasury point man on taxes, accompanying Mr. Mnuchin into “Big Six” meetings with top Republican lawmakers drafting the tax plan and laying out the administration’s positions on which taxes and deductions to cut or preserve.

.. He fits the mold of Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers, Mr. Mnuchin and Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, both of whom made a career on Wall Street. While not a Goldman Sachs alumnus, as they are, he brings an extensive background from the world of finance, having been a banker at Morgan Stanley and the president of Muzinich & Co., an international investment firm founded by his father.

.. His Wall Street brashness sometimes shines through when he gets into deal-making mode.

.. Mr. Muzinich, who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and a law degree from Yale

.. In a 2007 Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Mr. Muzinich and a co-author, Eric Werker, called on Congress to offer tax credits to companies that build factories in developing countries and to offset the lost revenue with reductions in foreign aid.

.. “I think that he is pragmatic,” said Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, where Mr. Muzinich taught before joining the Treasury Department. “He’s looking for good policy solutions, not policy positions.”

.. Some economists have scoffed at Mr. Mnuchin’s promises that tax cuts would more than pay for themselves because of the robust economic growth he says they will create. The department came under fire for removing from its web site an economic study that contradicted the secretary’s analysis of the benefits of corporate tax cuts.