Progressive Faith in Caesar’s Divine Ratchet

Ross Douthat (who, by the way, will be in Rhode Island for this year’s revived Portsmouth Institute conference) catches something in the attitude of Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer:

Unless, of course, you just define “worked” to mean “changed public policy without the opposition being able to stop us,” in which case we’re just dealing with Caesarism justified by consequentialism, and Pfeiffer’s argument is the boasting of a successful machiavel, unmoored both from constitutional norms and his boss’s own once-professed ideals. Which seems like the more accurate reading of the account he’s giving Chait: It’s less a story of how this president forged a political strategy better suited to our polarized times than it is a story of how Obama realized that a second-term president in an era of gridlock doesn’t need to be politically successful to put his stamp on major policy arenas … he just needs to let go of any principled concerns about what a president can and cannot do.

… expediency is all: A given move is a success if the opposition fails to find a way to block it, the hemmers and hawers are proven wrong if the president isn’t impeached, and the state of your party doesn’t really matter because an unbound presidency is all that progressivism really needs.

Two observations, here.  First, Caesarism wasn’t just an attitude toward the enactment of policies.  It was also a variation of dynastic succession, with the current ruler literally adopting people to put them in line for ascension to the role.  One reason the state of your party might not matter is if the regime has reason to believe that its party can’t lose the newly powerful executive office.  (This puts rumors that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett cued up the Hillary Clinton email scandal in an interesting context, although the White House has denied it.)

The second observation tempers the conspiracy theorizing somewhat.  Progressives’ worldview is built on many articles of pure faith, but among the chief ones is belief in the ratchet of progress.  They believe that each step of their transformation of society locks in.  To them, a policy like ObamaCare or the FCC’s takeover of the Internet or the absorption of millions of illegal immigrants can never be undone, so straining to get policy to that next tooth on the gear is worthwhile, because the aftermath isn’t reversal, but rest.

One of the great deficiencies of progressive thought, though, is precisely its failure to comprehend the importance of maintaining the culture and mores — Douthat’s “principled concerns.”  Putting too much pressure on the ratchet can cause it to break, leaving the society vulnerable to invasion or simple collapse.  And lunging to reach that next step means that the activists don’t have the institutional strength to hold power and prevent their sacrifice of the rule of law from becoming a pretext for a dictatorship that even they wouldn’t like.

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