On Meghan McCain
March 19th, 2009
Why we care what John McCain’s daughter says.
Yep. Out of all the news stories out there, the shallow one caught my interest. But really, the economy is going down the tubes, the world is going socialist, and America may not survive long enough to vote Barry Carter out of office in 2012. What else is there but to quibble over the details? What really matters is that John McCain’s daughter thinks Republicans are too right-wing. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Meghan McCain wrote a column a week and a half ago which implied that Ann Coulter uses hate, negativity, and scare tactics, and said that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck. Even worse, Republicans like Coulter make it difficult for the Party to reach out to young Americans. This made McCain an instant media darling. Laura Ingraham picked up on this and made a snide remark about McCain’s weight. Ms. McCain retorted by telling her to “kiss my fat a**,” on The View. She’s still a media darling. That’s the short story.
Before I get on with it, conservatives should stop talking about Meghan’s looks. I’ve seen this on message boards and it’s a stupid approach. First of all, she’s not unattractive. Line her up against eco-feminists or the women at Code Pink and see if making fun of her appearance makes sense. Second of all, it’s irrelevant. You think I read Robert Bork because he’s cute?
On the surface, what Meghan McCain says shouldn’t matter to conservatives. She’s really no different from any 24-year old upper-middle class kid—for all the different places she’s been, she’s not apparently worldly. She blogs about what every privileged, college-age woman is likely to write about: dating, music, and her overseas trips to places like Vietnam. She’s solicited opinions on what tattoo she should get to commemorate her time on her father’s campaign trail. She wearily portrays herself as a victim of “socially accepted prejudice,” because Laura Ingraham called her “plus-sized.” It’s a sign of immaturity that her instinct isn’t to deflect Ingraham’s intemperate jab by stating it doesn’t matter what some radio host thinks of her body type, but to instead take shelter in platitudes about prejudice and inner beauty. In short, we’re not dealing with a seasoned veteran like William Kristol here, so why does Ms. McCain get under our skin?
The reason McCain’s ideological dilettantism is troubling is that it reflects the Republican break from conservative values. Since the conservative movement became self-conscious somewhere around the mid-20th century, the Republican Party has been the only major party conservatives can consider a safe haven. Even that’s been tenuous, as a good number of Republicans have been willing to walk barefoot on lava to disassociate themselves from conservatism since the days of Barry Goldwater. A pessimist could argue that the Republican Party has never really been conservative, with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s ascendency, which began in 1976 and ended as soon as he handed the reins to George H.W. Bush in 1988. If both the Democrats and Republicans reject conservative values, America will risk becoming Europe, a self-hating western democracy without the courage or the cultural I.Q. to sustain itself (By cultural I.Q., I don’t mean the ability to impress socialites with Seinfeld trivia. I mean a deep familiarity with one’s cultural heritage).
I won’t say Ms. McCain isn’t serious, but it’s fair to presume her attachment to the Republican Party is more affective than intellectual. On one hand, she describes herself as “Republican spawn,” against everything the liberals she knows on Facebook believe in. On the other hand, she proclaims that she’s proud of not being “conservative enough,” according to the popular myth that being against things like gay marriage is “old-school.” In this sense, Michelle Malkin is right. Meghan McCain seems to have no ideological principles, just a working, incomprehensible version of moral relativism, which causes her to claim that Ann Coulter’s brashness makes her bad, but the equally abrasive Russell Brand is “freaking hilarious.” Who’s Russell Brand? He’s the British comedian whose Schick is to mock worldliness by making fun of American conservatives. That doesn’t narrow it down? Hmm…I thought you had to be original to be popular with young people. Anyway, a Republican laughing at Russell Brand is like a feminist laughing at Andrew Dice Clay as he’s going on about “broads.” It doesn’t make sense unless the audience doesn’t sympathize with whoever’s being made fun of. For Meghan McCain, this is a problem, because if she doesn’t relate to conservatives, she’s going to have a lot of trouble understanding what it’ll take to get them to reach out to young people.
McCain’s attack on Coulter is little more than self-assuredly clever, water-cooler conservatism. McCain claims that Coulter perpetuates negative stereotypes about Republican women, and proceeds to take the same bait liberals take by misunderstanding Coulter’s comment about perfecting Jews as anti-Semitic sensationalism. She berates Coulter for not having the GOP’s best interests at heart, when all conservatives are generally more loyal to principles than any power-hungry political party. This is the girl who risked embarrassing Republicans this month when she said on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show that she doesn’t know enough about economics to have a strong opinion about them, then turned around and said on Fox & Friends, “This second stimulus package that Nancy Pelosi’s talking about I think doesn’t make sense.” Her inexperience coupled with her high profile is a red meat generator for left-wing hecklers, who seem to enjoy Republican vulnerability more than sex. If McCain had a better grasp of her ideals, she could have at least given thoughtful reasons for feeling wary about the rumored bill.
I’m no stranger of being critical of Ann Coulter, so I’m not angry at McCain for doing the same. But my biggest beef with Ann is that she hit her literary peak with Treason, and hasn’t matched it since. My critique of Coulter is substantive, but I’m also a huge fan of hers. In many ways, I’m not much different from Metallica fans who feel disappointed that every new album James Hetfield and co. release doesn’t stand up to the classic “Master of Puppets.” Meghan McCain’s critique of Coulter is similarly personal. In the column that propelled her to fame, Meghan doesn’t cite anything about Coulter except her demeanor and a couple of her controversial statements. Meghan’s post gives us no reason to believe she has read any one of Coulter’s books, or is familiar with what the polemical figurehead writes in her weekly column. McCain only uses Coulter to illustrate what she doesn’t like about her brand new party (she registered as a Republican last father’s day).
This leads us to another problem. Every young conservative wants to be the edgy, new-fashioned right-winger who finally gets young people to register as Republicans. So they ignore decades of impressive conservative thought and instead attempt to redefine the entire movement along the lines of trendy, often liberal sensibilities. Most of the time this manifests itself in libertarian types who don’t relate to the religious right. Heck, I was guilty of the same thing once in my life. But here’s what the neophyte crusaders for a new conservative movement always miss. Firstly, there’s no such thing as a “progressive” conservative. The two ideals are polar opposites; even liberalism is more compatible with conservatism than progressivism. At best, progressives are ideologically agnostic (or nihilistic), which makes them susceptible to every bad left-wing idea they come in contact with (think FDR). At worst, progressivism is an aggressive, statist enterprise which has little use for the United States Constitution as it limits their ability to remake America in their egalitarian image. Woodrow Wilson is progressive, and he may have been the most anti-conservative president in American history. The fact Meghan McCain doesn’t comprehend the incompatibility between small-government traditionalism and big-government social engineering is telling.
Secondly, the majority of older gen-Xers, my generation, supported Ronald Reagan (60% of voters under 30 voted for Reagan in 1984). This scared the hell out of the media, who didn’t know what to make of it. Yet Ronald Reagan was a genial, white, old man; he was certainly not a conservative “punk,” “progressive,” “moderate,” or whatever other cloak insecure conservatives wrap themselves in order to appeal to shallow people. That’s fine. We don’t want the Daily Show brats on our side! We don’t want young anti-hippies in knit caps vandalizing Priuses. We don’t want the twenty-years old wearing Che Guevara t-shirts to start sporting Tim McVeigh’s visage. Conservatism should rise and fall along with the character of the American people. We don’t need to be “progressive,” we need to be smart, brave, and above all, able to defend and promote conservatism. We need to spend more time reading Mises, and less time jeering Ann Coulter.
Ronald Reagan took conservatism, something that’s always been unfairly derided as outdated and bigoted, and made it popular (if only for a short while) by articulately promoting it without apology. He didn’t need to become more “moderate” in order to reach out to people. He just needed to be himself, without rancor, and without anxious pleading. Meghan McCain seems smart, but from what she’s written online, she’s also obviously inexperienced, and unmistakably unfamiliar with conservatism. Meghan McCain can’t recite the underlying philosophy behind the American right any more than I can write an ad hoc historical essay about Yugoslavian chess champions. Yet she’s been a Republican for less than a year, and she’s already convinced she knows which direction her party should go to win future elections. She’s like a cocky rookie quarterback telling the coach, in front of his entire team, that his playbook sucks.
In light of all this, Meghan, I have a respectful plea. If you have the bravery to tell conservatives they’re too extreme, then please have the character to read a few books about the movement first. If you can discern why conservatives oppose stem-cell research, if you can recall on what grounds conservatives disagree with gay marriage, if you can understand Ann Coulter’s appeal beyond her controversial sound bites, and then turn around and tell me why you think they’re wrong, then maybe you’ll have the authority to tell me and everyone like me we’re too extremist for our own good.
Cross-posted at 