Those gentleman Republicans
Jeffrey Hart, who died recently, was a highly respected longtime conservative thinker and writer who had been a professor of English literature at Dartmouth for three decades. Scott Johnson, who studied under him there, wrote a tribute that clearly shows he had the highest respect for Professor Hart.
I didn’t know Hart, nor am I familiar with his writing, and I trust Scott Johnson’s judgment on the huge value of his life’s work and the inspiration he was as a teacher. But this obituary for Hart in the Times contains some statements Hart made in his later years that illustrate almost perfectly a phenomenon I was writing about recently: the person on the right who is a gentleman, looking for fellow gentlemen or gentlewomen. Here’s an excerpt from that comment of mine, in which I describe as “these people” this type of Republican and/or conservative and what he/she is looking for in a politician:
Bush senior was a patrician Yalie, very old school country club Republican, with impeccable credentials. He passed muster in that respect…[He was one of the] gentlemen and moderate Republicans who played by the rules…
Reagan was sui generis. But he was also a gentleman too—which Trump is not. That is one of the main reasons these people hate Trump—he’s not playing by the rules of the well-educated, classy gentleman (even though he actually is quite well-educated and grew up very rich).
That’s what I mean when I wrote about their wanting someone like Trump to demonstrate class and education by certain airs and signs. In other words, act like a gentleman.
These days, people who have this preference for gentlemen in politics usually hide it; I’ve never heard of someone openly admitting it. But Hart wasn’t hiding it at all in his quoted remarks, which occurred during the Bush II administration:
Professor Hart explained his personal politics in an interview with the cultural critic James Panero in 2006 in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.
“My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast,” he said. “It is Burke brought up-to-date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”
I’m thinking some of this may have been meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, a reference to certain cliches about conservatives. Without knowing Hart at all, I really can’t say. But it also seems serious as well, and if so it would explain better than I could some of the spirit that animates the later hatred of Trump that comes from NeverTrumpers on the conservative side, particularly those who have long dwelled in the realms of acadame.
The Panero interview quotes an op-ed Hart wrote in 2005:
The Bush Presidency often is called conservative. This is a mistake. It is populist and radical, and its principal energies have roots in American history, and these roots are not conservative.
That’s one of the ways in which Hart justified his opposition to someone like George W. Bush: that Bush was not really conservative. And most conservatives would agree that Bush was not really a conservative, so that contention by Hart is not particularly puzzling. What is puzzling was the fact that Hart apparently voted for John Kerry in 2004 as a reaction—after all, if Bush wasn’t conservative, what on earth was John Kerry? Later Hart voted for Obama, twice—a bit puzzling because I would think that in many ways he would have been attracted to gentleman Romney, except for the fact that Romney is a Mormon, which may in Hart’s eyes have been something like being an evangelical.
Here’s the larger context of one of the Hart quotes I mentioned earlier:
Like the Whig gentry who were the Founders, I loathe populism,” Hart explains. “Most especially in the form of populist religion, i.e., the current pestiferous bible-banging evangelicals, whom I regard as organized ignorance, a menace to public health, to science, to medicine, to serious Western religion, to intellect and indeed to sanity. Evangelicalism, driven by emotion, and not creedal, is thoroughly erratic and by its nature cannot be conservative. My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. It is Burke brought up to date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”
A decade later Hart was, unfortunately, suffering from the dementia which ended up causing his death. So he never had a chance to express his opinion of Donald Trump. One can only imagine what it would have been, but my guess is that he would probably have been a firm member of the NeverTrumpers.
neo: Good grief. I read the Poweline tribute and concluded Jeffrey Hart was a conservative academic I had missed and ought to read sometime.
I really can’t figure a conservative who would vote for Kerry once and Obama twice. I was annoyed enough with Christopher Buckley who went for Obama due to daddy issues as far as I could tell.
The perfect is not always the enemy of the good, but often it is.
Did Hart somehow imagine Kerry and Obama weren’t populists and were more conservative than W, McCain and Romney?
Was Hart looking for nothing more than a candidate with aristocratic manners, the right trouser crease and proper beverage preferences?
Maybe Hart had something to say about English Lit, but I don’t think I could read him on politics.
I read that great tribute, too — but when I found out he voted Obama, I was hugely turned off.
I’m sure that while McCain was populist/questionable, but Hart would be among the NeverPalin types. For the short time it was active, Palin Derangement Syndrome was about as vicious as is Trump DS, and worse than Bush DS.
It should be consistently called Democrat Derangement Syndrome, which Dems show against an ever changing group of Reps, including Kavanaugh and 16 year old Nick Sandmann (Yay, $250 mln lawsuit). Even before Trump is gone, there will be e-lynchings against other Reps because of Dem DS.
Hart strikes me as evolving into a too-ivory-towered snobbish Rep, who prefers to be accepted into Dem dominated company with the unspoken agreement that they can disagree on political parties, but most assumptions are consistent between them
Christian haters are more naturally in the Democratic Party.
I found a piece Hart wrote for The Daily Beast in November 2008 — he was definitely not a fan of G.W. Bush or Palin:
Hart by 2006 was trading in weird conspiracy theories. He endorsed Kerry in 2004, Obama in 2008 and, contacted by a reporter over the telephone in 2011, endorsed him again. He had already fallen silent by 2011, having published almost nothing for several years previous.
I don’t buy Hart’s explanation of his reaction to George W. Bush and tend toward the view that he was already suffering from cognitive impairments. He had a reputation in previous years for being a lushington, so may have aged less well in that respect than men ordinarily do.
Sarah Palin is now the heroine of the Republican base. Scary. During the campaign it became obvious that she is completely ignorant on the principal issues. It never became widely known that she is a religious nut: she believes in the imminent End of Days and the “Rapture,” in which the saved will be suddenly wooshed up to heaven —a notion that has no basis in scripture or anything else.
Charles Fried made remarks like this. It’s an indicator of the degree to which the judgment of academics is distorted and disfigured by the peculiarity of their work life and social circle. In Hart’s case, you can add general intellectual decline.
Art Deco:
Maybe by that time Hart was already in the throes of very early dementia. In its very early stages it can take the form of personality changes and that sort of thing.
I really can’t figure a conservative who would vote for Kerry once and Obama twice. I was annoyed enough with Christopher Buckley who went for Obama due to daddy issues as far as I could tell.
Christopher Buckley earned his living as a humor and travel writer. His published monographs were all in the humor genre. For much of his work life he was employed by Forbes and was for a number of years the editor of ForbesLife, their travel publication. Other than a couple of pieces placed in The Weekly Standard ca 1998, he did not write for the starboard press (his father’s publication excepted). His father hired Richard Brookhiser in 1977 and for a decade or so had hoped to turn the editor’s chair over to him ‘ere concluding he was unsuitable. He elected to do that because he knew his son could not be his heir. Whatever issues C. Buckley had with his mother, he was much more her son than his father’s. His mother was an engaging society lady who didn’t devote much thought to religion or politics.
Over the period running from 1975 to 2010, I think he placed a couple of dozen pieces in National Review – humor pieces, travel pieces, and reviews of belles lettres. He has never in his life been a political writer. IIRC, he’s had two stints in the PR apparat of Republican administrations, employed to write speeches for George Bush the Elder. To the extent he had any real political affinities, they seem to have been for the pre-Reagan Republican establishment.
And, yes, his posthumous treatment of his mother and father was a scandal. His treatment of his wife was also a scandal. His treatment of his ba**ard son has been odd and erratic (a quality his father’s treatment of the boy also carried). He’s just. kind. of. a. sh!t.
One can have a resolute commitment to being a gentleman and practicing gentlemanly behavior while appreciating the robust and swashbuckling thrusts of a person with sound economic and policy views who is coming from another place in the world. William Buckley and Ronald Reagan were gentlemanly fellows who gave nothing away because of it. Donald Trump is not a gentlemanly fellow, but he has many sound ideas. Support the good ideas and point out how the bad ideas can be improved.
Gentleman Republican Christopher Buckley and his estranged wife (who is the daughter of gentleman Republican Donald Gregg, Williams ’51) appear to have been unable to persuade their daughter that proper bluebloods understand that less is more and thus the only women who dye their hair platinum are those indifferent to being mistaken for streetwalkers.
Regarding Christopher Buckley, Iowahawk’s (David Burge) take-down of C. Buckley personified as T. Coddrington Van Voorhees VII has never been topped. The essays are still available on the old Iowahawk.typepad website.
He liked the cut of that Obama chap’s jib.
Conservative, Inc. have been standing athwart history, yelling “Not in the face!”, for generations, infecting fresh young minds with suicidal defeatism and appeasement. They have unfailingly played the role of the Washington Generals, determined to stick to their precious principles and lose with dignity. Being controlled opposition has been a cushy gig, as long as they could keep those donations flowing in from the upper classes who go on cruises and listen to speakers and pretend that all this accomplishes a damn thing other than fattening some huckster’s wallets. But when someone came along and pointed out to everyone how full of feces these people are — someone who isn’t a libertarian sperg, but just a moderate Democrat who remembers a time when Republicans viewed capitalism as a means to an end, not a religion — well, as Harlan Ellison said, they got cranky, man. And their breeding and education only differentiates them from the point-and-shriek SJW crowd in terms of the literacy of their insults — in every other respect they’re just as nasty, venal and willing to discard their supposedly ironclad principles at the drop of a hat. Anything to cleanse the precious fluids of the body politic; anything to rid us once and for all of this meddlesome Trump. I’ll take a shrieking, bike-locking SJW any day over the willing and eager cuckolds of Conservative Inc. Because they don’t pretend to be my ally while they’re selling me out and stabbing me in the back.
He liked the cut of that Obama chap’s jib.
Wagers he had a liberal girlfriend in 2008
One can have a resolute commitment to being a gentleman and practicing gentlemanly behavior while appreciating the robust and swashbuckling thrusts of a person with sound economic and policy views who is coming from another place in the world.
During the years just prior to the Spanish Civil War, the chief of the Carlist movement (‘the Traditionalist Communion’) was the Count of Rodezno. He professed indifference when asked who would be the chancellor of Spain in a Carlist regime. “One of these gentlemen here. It is a matter of secretaries. I shall be with the King and we shall talk of the chase”.
This seems like the moon under water, wanting the president to be a gentleman. It’s like wanting your wife to be a gentleman. Contemporary American politics doesn’t produce gentlemen, any more than XX chromosomes do. Even the senior George Bush dumped all that New England Javits-Republican gentlemanly stuff when actually campaigning. (Remember Willie Horton? Remember the flag factory? Edmund Burke didn’t do stuff like that.)
Reading Hart’s comments makes me think he was just a snob and his snobbery was more important to him than political principle.
Thank God I am not a Gentleman Conservative. Give me my Single Malt Peaty Scotch with just a touch of water.
Even the senior George Bush dumped all that New England Javits-Republican gentlemanly stuff
Jacob Javits spent about 70% of his life living in Manhattan and another 20% in Washington. He was foreign to New England and to the sort of blueblood society in which George Bush the Elder grew up. He was an enrolled Republican because he couldn’t abide Tammany clubhouse politics; he was also reportedly advised by the garment union chieftains that he’d be of more assistance to them working within the Republican Party than in enrolling in one of New York’s ample third parties of the 1940s. ‘RINO’ is a witless term in almost any venue, but it applied quite precisely to Jacob Javits.
While we’re at it, the Bush family only migrated to Connecticut after the 1st World War (though they owned property in Maine earlier). The Pierce family were also comparatively recent transplants from the Midwest. And, again, George Bush the Elder was never a promoter of the liberal dispensation in the Republican Party or what was called ‘Modern’ Republicanism during the 1950s. His father was a ‘Modern’ Republican. For his son, issues were fungible and he was ever at home with what the prevailing currents were: Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan.
“Evangelicalism, driven by emotion, and not creedal, is thoroughly erratic and by its nature cannot be conservative. My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. ” — Hart
FWIW, the original Conservatives aka the Right were, in the revolutionary French definition, Monarchist Aristocrats.
“He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.” – Hart
* * *
“Later Hart voted for Obama, twice—a bit puzzling because I would think that in many ways he would have been attracted to gentleman Romney, except for the fact that Romney is a Mormon, which may in Hart’s eyes have been something like being an evangelical.” – Neo
* * *
huxley on February 23, 2019 at 3:55 pm at 3:55 pm said:
…
I really can’t figure a conservative who would vote for Kerry once and Obama twice. …
Did Hart somehow imagine Kerry and Obama weren’t populists and were more conservative than W, McCain and Romney?
Was Hart looking for nothing more than a candidate with aristocratic manners, the right trouser crease and proper beverage preferences?
* * *
Perhaps Hart disliked Romney, not so much for being “something like” the evangelicals (the LDS Church really is not in that camp, although its first members came from the same historical roots), but for being a teetotaler (who didn’t even drink tea!).
Why didn’t Jeffrey Hart recognize that Obama was a populist? Did he miss all those giant rallies? And didn’t he pay any attention to Obama’s views?
Hart’s dismissal of Bush W.’s regard for Jesus Christ as a thinker… as mere political calculation… is telling. I imagine Hart held intelligence in high regard but based on his expressed views, gave little weight to wisdom. And in that, he was a typical academic.
All tenured professors should be required to spend a year working on a flyover country farm. Best place to get a grounding in reality. Another ugly February day here, bigly winds and icy drizzle. Nothing like 100 degree summer days with 80% humidity followed by -20 winter days with -40 windchills to cure one of CO2 paranoia.
I really can’t figure a conservative who would vote for Kerry once and Obama twice. …Did Hart somehow imagine Kerry and Obama weren’t populists and were more conservative than W, McCain and Romney?
Neither Kerry nor Obama are the least bit populist. They’re quite at home with the animating constituencies of the Democratic Party – the teachers’ unions, the trial lawyers, and Hollywood. They know nothing of the wage earners inclined to vote for the party (Blacks, Puerto Ricans, California Chicanos, and trashy single mothers NOS). The closest Kerry’s been to the Democratic Party’s wage earner base would be his years as a prosecutor in Boston, though perhaps he had a few such people on his client list during his years as a private attorney. The closest Obama’s ever been would be his mother-in-law and the locals he was pestering during the two years and change he was employed as a salaried public nuisance in Chicago. Kerry hasn’t practiced law in 36 years and BO left his exploitive Alinskyite employer behind 30 years ago.
One of Obama’s signatures is that he scapegoats and despises non-exotic people steeped in vernacular culture. He’s all in on the effort to stick the blame for slum crime on rural gun owners and has no interest in the circumscribed ambitions and accomplishments of someone like Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (“you didn’t build that”). Kerry’s famous for pulling rank on people (“Do You Know Who I Am?”).
People like Hart and Charles Fried appear to have been addled by handsome academic and professional degrees and fancy that spending a great deal of time with briefing books trumps the actual experience of running an agency with an institutional mission more elevated than serving you. It says something rather disagreeable about academics that a shallow ticket-puncher like BO is considered more ‘knowledgeable’ than Gov. Palin, who spent 11 years of her life supervising social organisms with real buildings and payrolls to meet and negotiating with other elected officials over policy and appropriations.
“Later Hart voted for Obama, twice—a bit puzzling because I would think that in many ways he would have been attracted to gentleman Romney, except for the fact that Romney is a Mormon, which may in Hart’s eyes have been something like being an evangelical.” – Neo
In for a dime, in for a dollar. One of the very few Obamacons who was later explicit about her regrets was Megan McArdle. (McArdle may be the most capable practitioner of topical commentary in her generation; a most engaging and interesting character).
This contradiction is inherent in USA politics and constitutional conservatism. While the Framers were aristocrats and gentlemen, detesting populism of any kind, and well aware of the dangers of the mobs passions and pure democracy, the American experiment was a feat of a radical Protestantism. But Reformation undeniably was a populist movement, and still evangelical movement is populist to the core. This puts conservatives into an awkward position: their best ideologists are well-educated Catholics like Scallia, but their voters are radical Protestants with all baggage they carry.
Mr. Hart is dead.
(EG) Dartmouth has been infested, and overcome, by parasites.
NH is “purple” State with “emotional” approach to legislative demeanor.
Now what?
Gentleman? There’s a certain social contract with that.
“Be nice. Until it’s time to NOT be nice.”
Reading this, Hart was a total snob.
Pinching his nose and holding it high in the air as he viewed with distain the majority of his fellow citizens, especially, I’d imagine, those in “flyover country”—smelly, uneducated, barely sentient boobs, and frequently given to religious fanaticism. **
Practically everyone inside the beltway and on the two coasts hates Trump because he is a disruptor and unafraid, he has busted up their profitable and comfortable racket, and they can’t forgive him for it.
But, I’d rather have a fighter—unafraid of his critics, and “punching back twice as hard”—than a loser, and some milquetoast of a “gentleman.”
And as for the “gentleman” bit, I’m pretty sure that, for a lot of these folks, being a gentleman is just a pretense, a mask they put on to fool the proles.
** I am reminded of this statement by former Speaker of the House, Harry Reid, about “smelly tourists/constituents. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP6qeBPl_HA
Reid made these remarks in opening the new U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, built under the Capitol building.
This facility was supposedly built to increase security but, I’m betting that the motive of reducing many members of Congress’ contact with smelly tourists and constituents was not far behind.
Reading this, Hart was a total snob. Pinching his nose and holding it high in the air
Snobbery is an unfortunate byproduct of efforts to maintain standards. The thing is, he wasn’t maintaining standards. He was just being erratic and weird.
“I’m thinking some of this may have been meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, a reference to certain cliches about conservatives.”
I usually refer to this tone of voice as ‘serious, but not solemn’.
parker on February 24, 2019 at 1:38 am at 1:38 am said:
All tenured professors should be required to spend a year working on a flyover country farm. Best place to get a grounding in reality.
* * *
Second that,and add politicians and public employees: no job in the government until you have had a job in the real world.
I just finished Jordan Peterson’s “Twelve Rules,” and his vitae (sometimes mentioned in the book) is amazing in the degree to which he actually worked for a living outside of academia: dishwasher, gas jockey, bartender, short-order cook, beekeeper, oil derrick bit re-tipper, plywood mill labourer, railway line worker.
PLUS consultant to the UN, clinical psychologist, adviser to law firms, professor, public lecturer, and published author of more than 100 scientific papers (not social science hogwash) – plus his massive book “Maps of Meaning.”
I am sure this experience forms the core of both his erudition and his popularity with the multitudes, who are hungry for someone who knows great things and can still talk to regular folks. Victor Davis Hanson is of the same ilk.
Hart’s beliefs and standards are really quite antithetical to those needed by a democratic republic, if the words quoted here are representative.
He seems to be an arrogant aristocrat. Or perhaps his quotations contain the stigmata of less-than-obvious dementia. Some of his words could have come straight out of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels….”shaken, not stirred”.
Hart never felt himself or his country in danger, apparently. Superb and secure arrogance, a feature of the Ruling Class. Not my kinda guy, and I was once upon a time a tenured Duke faculty member. I left because of the arrogance, the pretense of nobility.
Of course, Hart would vote for Obama:
“He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”
Obama went to prep school, then Occidental, then Columbia, and Harvard Law. Don’t know whether he shops at J. Press, but his pants are creased razor-sharp. He plays golf, and I’m sure he’d just love a Beefeater martini!
What’s not to like?
Thinks he’s Thomas Jefferson.
Would have been a Royalist.
Hart is one of the reasons we are in this mess. Too many years wearing deck shoes instead of combat boots. But I do agree with him on Evangelicalism.
Hart is one of the reasons we are in this mess.
Hart and Buckley bore no responsibility for the failure theatre of Republican politicians.
But I do agree with him on Evangelicalism.
The problems of evangelicalism don’t have much to do with the political engagement of lay evangelicals. The evangelical leadership stratum has now and again been too explicit in its political activities, and movement evangelicals have now and again offered an overly elaborate menu of political objects. Nothing movement evangelicals have done has injured the cause of what the Republican Party putatively stands for one-tenth as much as the general incompetence and vapidity of people like A.M. McConnell.
As for the problems of evangelicalism as a religious dispensation, you’re better off reading S.M. Hutchens, who has a granular knowledge of that territory. And, while we’re at it, they cannot begin to approach in thoroughness the failures of the last three generations of mainline clergy.
Evangelical pastors remind me of Profits (not Prophets), same as those in the Old Testament that killed the prophets for speaking blasphemy.
The weird thing about religious fanaticism is that… what if you are on the wrong side and are killing God’s actual servants while you are part of Satan, the opposition? Nobody wants to think that when they are using their Profits to molest children, buy sports cars, and lord it over the congregation as Pastors and Reverends.
Evangelical pastors remind me of Profits (not Prophets), same as those in the Old Testament that killed the prophets for speaking blasphemy.
That’s because you’re not thinking about evangelical pastors. You’re thinking about a small population of high-living televangelists and a scatter of troublesome megachurch entrepreneurs.