The Origin of the Term Compassionate Conservatism

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The Origin of the Term Compassionate Conservatism

This story, to the best of our knowledge, is not actually based on any factual events. It is thus offered in the spirit of those famous “Cadillac Welfare Queen” anecdotes from the 1980s, compelling as an exercise in illustration, believable to many, but ultimately totally made up. However, the term had to come from somewhere, so could this really be all that far off the mark?

Scene: Two-Partner Dallas advertising agency, late 20th Century.

Hey guy, got a lead on a possible new gig! That ball team owner we worked with a couple of years ago on filling his skyboxes is looking to move into politics and needs a tagline. We come up with a good one, it’s gonna be a lotta business if he goes anywhere. His resume isn’t very impressive but his pedigree sure is!

Ok, cool. Game on! First order of business: what’s he looking for?

Well, this is politics, after all. Pretty much the same approach as any other product. Find a theme that keeps the positives high and the negatives low. Strict adherence to reality not much of a factor. Something new on this one, though. He wants to keep his Hard Right constituencies happy – they have the dough and the muscle - while being as appealing as possible to the great mass of voters.

Whoa! A suicide mission!

Hey, don’t think of it as a problem, think of it as an opportunity!

OK, OK. Allright, let’s figure out what we have to work with. What did he say about his political positions?

Nothing very exciting there. Pretty far to the right, the kind of stuff you’d expect to keep the fat-cats and true believers ecstatic. His big supporters are some of our favorite people: the whale-nukers, the born-again-and-you-should-be-toos, the cold-dead-hands gun crowd, the hate-government-except-for-my-fat-contract boys, the it’s-the-peoples-money flat taxers. The usual cream of Dallas society.

Great! He hangs around with those wackos and we’re supposed to make him look good to soccer moms and Joe Sixpack? I mean we’ve done plenty of political work before. It’s no problem coming up with mass market soft focus flag-waving campaigns. But trying to keep the red meat crowd happy too? Get real!

Hey, so we’re pioneers. That’s how you end up with all the real estate!

Yeah, after you pick the arrows out of your back.

(A day passes. A pile of wadded up papers starts to form on the floor).

Ok, so we’ve got to do something new here. OK, here’s something new. What if we turned the whole thing around. Instead of being stealthy about right-wing inclinations, we put it right out there in your face. “We’re fascists and we like it.” A Jersey kind of thing. You know, “Youse gotta problem wid dat?”

We’ll, the wackos’d eat it up but it would scare off the chicks and the minorities. That’s most of the population, in case you hadn’t noticed. Interesting idea though. It might be tough for a politician, but I wonder if it could work for, say, a media type. Something to think about.

Well, think about it after we come up with something for our boy!

(Several more days and a larger pile of wadded up papers later).

Ok, let’s review the bidding. The problem is that the Right Wing has a reputation as a bunch of obnoxious assholes, behavior that they do indeed demonstrate in spades when their pols don’t toe the line. It’s like trying to keep Hitler and the Poles happy at the same time!

OK, Mr. History Major! Well, I studied some history too, and it sounds like that whole Solidarity thing. You know, Alexander whatshisname? Dubcek. The people loved his stuff even though he was still a Communist, but to paraphrase what they say in England, Brezhnev was not amused.

Actually Solidarity was Poland. Dubcek was Prague Spring. I’m still impressed, though. It really illustrates the problem. It’s like that great line from The Karate Kid. “Do karate yes, or do karate no. In the middle, squished like grape!” And getting squished like grape is where we seem to be heading!

Now that we’re talking about communists and getting squished like grape, what about that Gorbachev guy? He seemed to have a flair for marketing. Probably been in advertising if he’d lived here. Everybody loved him, right up to the point his country started falling apart. Now that’s one big squished grape! It still was a pretty good trick, though, don’t you think? What’s that slogan he uses?

You mean perestroika? Oh yeah, that would work great for an ex-baseball team owner from Texas!

No, it was something else. I remember the first time I heard it. It sort of set me back because it seemed like an oxymoron, coming from the folks that brought you Stalin.

I know what you mean, something like “Communism with a human face.” Yep, a good tagline. It’s a miracle they came up with that one without an ad agency!

What do you think of this idea? We use a little of that in-your-face thing, come right out and say “conservative.” I know, I know, that’s supposed to be the kiss of death with the center, but work with me on this, OK? I mean, everyone loves Ronnie, and you know how far out on the right he is. He just knows how to soften things up. Something like “Conservatism with a Human Face.”

Well, obviously we can’t use the same phrase as the head of the Evil Empire, but I think you’re onto something. I don’t know, though. Do you really think we can get away with putting “conservatism” and some word like “nice” in the same tagline without getting laughed out of town? And won’t that piss off the fringe? Aren’t these the people who think that not being nice in defense of their particular obsession is a virtue?

Hmmm. You know, I’m thinking about something I heard once. “Every guy thinks he’s a good driver.” No matter how many times they’ve smashed up the car, they still think it was unavoidable circumstances. No, I haven’t gone into left field. Here’s what I’m thinking. Even the most open-minded centrist is probably conservative about something. If you’ve got a daughter you don’t want her going off the deep end, even if you’re otherwise a real live-and-let-live kind of guy. And even the most rabid conservative still probably thinks of himself, down deep, as a warm human being in a cold, hard world. Put the two ideas together and you might be able to get not a subtraction but a big addition. Capital-C Conservatives would like that he comes right out and calls himself one, and they might not be too put off if he softens it as long as it’s done in a Ronnie Reagan warm and folksy kind of way. The center might be startled by the “conservative” part, but might be OK if it’s followed by something they can relate to. It’ll be like “well, my granddad was conservative about spending, and we still loved him.” Whatever the softener is, though, it can’t be too liberal. That’s the rub.

Wow, great stuff. I see where you’re going. Same problem, though. What “human face” words would conservatives would not equate with Big Government? I mean, all the do-gooder words were taken with the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society. And, may I remind you that they were Liberal programs? “Conservatism with an open hand” isn’t going to cut it with the fringe. Unless of course that open hand has something in it for them! (Laughs).

Right. Tough one. Oo! Oo! I got it! We need a feeling word, not a doing word. I mean, like when you felt bad all those starving kids in China when we were growing up, but nobody really expected you to actually do anything about it, other than eating your own food. There’s a good conservative value!

Now we’re cooking! Ok, “Conservative but Human?” Sounds like you’re trying to convince someone you’re not an alien. “Conservative but Welcoming? Anti-immigration types’ll hate that one! Gracious? Too feminine. Responsive? Too at your service. Sociable? Affable? I think we’re losing it.

No! Stay with it. I think we’re on to something. We just need to think of a good feeling that everyone thinks they have in spades that doesn’t require them to feel guilty for not doing anything about it.

(Several hours and many pages of the thesaurus later).

Man, we’re getting nowhere. How do you have feelings about something without having some kind of obligation, ala some federal program the Right will hate?

You know, that sort of reminds me of Sunday school. We used to talk about God looking down on us sinners, loving us anyway, but self-constrained from doing any Old Testament kind of thing because of free will and such.

The born-agains will love it! Good stuff! OK, what kinds of feelings does God have? We’re in the wrong book. Put away that thesaurus and get Bartlett’s! It’s got a long section of Biblical phrases.

OK, here it is. Let’s look up God. Look at all those listings! Looking for emotions. Starting at the top, Old Testament. Wow, we got some serious smiting here! OK, New Testament. This looks better. Merciful? Nope, the give-em-the-chair types won’t buy that. Ditto for forgiving. Healing? Nope – they’d think they’d have to beef up Medicare. This is like a needle in a haystack!

Keep at it. I think we’re onto something.

Hey, here’s something. The parable of the Good Samaritan. “A certain Samaritan…had compassion on him.”

“Compassion.” Hmmm. I don’t know. Isn’t that the story where some foreigner helped out when others of his own nation didn’t? I don’t think that fits, do you? I mean, it has not just one but two bad words: “foreign” and “help.” Not to mention that it’s ultimately about a Jewish guy being saved by a Palestinian. The Right would never go for a word attached to a thought like that, especially the Apocalypse Now types.

Don’t forget, though, that we’re talking about God’s emotions, not people’s. God can feel compassion without doing anything about it and everyone still loves Him.

Maybe. “Conservative” and “Compassion” in the same sentence, though. Isn’t that really an oxymoron? I mean, conservatism is all about “just say no,” isn’t it?

Hey, it’s like we were saying before! Everyone thinks of themselves as compassionate. You can feel compassionate for those starving kids in China, but there’s just no way to actually do anything about it. Even the most greedy monopolist is capable of philanthropy, as long as he gets to call the shots on what worthy cause gets his cash. That still counts as compassion, doesn’t it?

I don’t know. Maybe we should check out all the biblical references on compassion in Bartlett’s.

OK. We got three. We already found the Good Samaritan. Here’s another. Apocrapha 2:11. “For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and very pitiful, and forgiveth sins, and saveth in times of affliction.” Stop acting like you just got shot! OK, here’s my take. The basic emotion here is compassion, and the other stuff is optional for Him.

That seems like a stretch to me. I mean, do you really think the Right Wing sees themselves as merciful, long-suffering, forgiving, and saving? No way! I’ll give you “very pitiful” though! (Laughs) What’s next?

OK, John 3:17. “Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Oo. That’s bad. It’s the perfect description of the man’s constituency! I think we’re out of the box.

Yeah, too bad. I thought we had something good there. OK, what now?

Maybe we should go back to the drawing board, take out the “conservatism” part, and give another look through our standard soft-focus politician words.

(A week and a bigger pile later).

OK, its time for the pitch and we got a dry hole. Should we just bag it?

No way! We’ve put way too much into this. Here’s what I think. I think we got too literal with that whole compassionate conservatism thing. I mean, this is marketing, right? Just because we used the Bible to dig it out, and every reference in the Bible was scornful of compassion without action, doesn’t mean that anyone would necessarily call us on it. I mean the Religious Right already believes they’re God’s chosen (no offense, buddy), and they’re not going to blow the whistle. And if not them, who else? Hey, you can justify anything in the Bible; the religious fringe does it every day, and for some pretty amazing political positions.

I guess you’re right. It’s our best shot. Let’s pitch it.

(Two weeks later).

Hey, I just heard from the man. It’s a go!

(Several hours of revelry!)

(Over champagne). His political advisor, yeah the one he calls Boy Genius, he jumped on it right away. Junior was concerned that the “compassionate” part would commit him to compassionate acts, but BG didn’t see it that way. The focus group was the clincher. They reacted like we had originally thought. No matter what their politics, they thought of themselves as basically compassionate, and with conservative tendencies in at least some areas. Put them together and it’s something for everyone! Once it was clear that Boy Genius and the focus group were in sync, the man was 100% on board. You know he’s always been pretty practical about those things.

We’ve struck gold here! On to Austin!