Reclaiming Conservatism
By Mickey Edwards
(Oxford University Press, 230 pages, $22)

Though George W. Bush has yet to leave the White House, conservative partisans are already in a lather over how their movement has fallen from grace. Most of the recent spate of articles and books, such as David Frum's Comeback, focus on how the Republicans can regain the initiative at the polls.

Mickey Edwards, a former Oklahoma congressman, takes a different and hugely welcome tack. In Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost—And How It Can Find Its Way Back, Edwards diagnoses the movement's spiritual, as distinct from its political, malaise. In fact, he argues that the urge to win at all costs turned modern conservatism inside out and betrayed its principles.

Edwards is not the first to make this charge; Alan Greenspan also remarked in his recent memoir that Republicans had traded "principle for power." But Edwards, a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation who is now at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, delves deeper into what those principles are. Although it has often been observed that the Bush administration departed from conservatism by running up big deficits, Edwards argues that its betrayal was far more comprehensive.

At its root, he contends, conservatism is not about mere budget numbers; it is a philosophy espousing prudent and limited government. Its lineage can be traced to the liberal tradition of John Locke, to whom individual liberty was the paramount value and a too-powerful state was a constant threat.

Thus, the U.S. Constitution (a profoundly liberal document for its time) established a government whose powers are both limited and divided. The Bush administration, Edwards contends, violated this idea in virtually every area. It abrogated Congress's responsibility for conducting war and other foreign policies. It ran roughshod over individual liberties, notably by approving unauthorized wiretaps and suspending habeas corpus for accused terrorists. It undermined the legislative function with its excessive secrecy, which prevented Congress from giving "informed consent." Bush also attached hundreds of signing statements that limit the scope of duly enacted laws.

Equally abhorrent to the Lockean credo is the effort by Bush-era conservatives to impose lifestyle and religious conformity on the rest of the country. Moral intolerance on the right has a lengthy pedigree; indeed, it dates back to the Inquisition. But to Edwards, the Christian right has tainted the small-government, live-and-let-live ideal. He offers Barry Goldwater as modern conservatism's standard-bearer, albeit one who was highly flawed. Unforgivably, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But unlike today's Republicans, he firmly opposed intrusions by the state into people's lives.