In the Arena

by Pete Hegseth

  Speaking of purity, the man most conservatives hold up as our standard-bearer—former president Ronald Reagan—was very Rooseveltian in his approach to leadership and public policy. Reagan was a transformative conservative leader, but he was also a pragmatist—a believer in the 85 percent solution who knew how to avoid gridlock and make things happen even with Democratic majorities in Congress. Reagan was a rock-ribbed conservative who, for goodness’ sake, launched a primary against a sitting Republican president in 1976; he was a conservative crusader but he ultimately went to Washington to govern, not die on the hill of principle. He was the “real reformer” Roosevelt spoke of, who never compromised on core principles or for the sake of compromise itself, but he was also not an “empty phrase-maker” with an impractical vision. By projecting a hopeful and optimistic spirit and forging a genuine, personal friendship with liberal Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, Reagan was able to substantially cut taxes for everyone, shrink government where he could, and restore America’s military—all things conservatives laud him for. However, lest we forget, President Reagan also raised some taxes and granted amnesty to three million illegal immigrants. Those instances—which can be fully understood only in the context of their time—do not disqualify Reagan for greatness; instead they demonstrate a man “with stumblings and shortcoming, yet [who] does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things.” Reagan was in the arena but did not pretend he was in there alone. As a result, Reagan knew the “triumph of high achievement” and America is better for it.

  But, as some conservatives need to finally realize, it’s no longer the 1980s—and the challenges facing America today may require new variations of what Reagan proposed. Conservatism, just like progressivism, is not a fixed end in and of itself, but instead is a means to a more important end: an equal shot at the American Dream for as many as possible. As a conservative, I believe fervently that lower taxes, fewer regulations, and more individual freedom give people more opportunity to succeed. But what if those policies alone are not sufficient to ensure equal opportunity and social mobility in America today? What if more liberty for the individual isn’t always enough, because a complex tax code and maze of regulations are rigged to benefit the wealthy and well connected at the top? What if cutting taxes (say, reducing the top rate from 39 percent to 35) is less consequential because businesses aren’t expanding, wages are lower, or companies have offshored both? What if a good, middle-class job no longer pays enough to support a family and raise multiple children? What if America’s public institutions—even with school choice—no longer reinforce character and values, let alone prepare our kids for twenty-first-century employment?

  Modern conservatism not only needs to have answers to these pressing questions that meet people where they are at in their lives; we also must accept the fact that not every solution to modern problems fits neatly into an ideological box. Roosevelt also speaks to this point, saying, “We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into the tool-owner.” There is no reason to work together with ideological opponents to seek equal outcomes, but in pursuit of “justice and the equality of opportunity” conservatives must be willing to work in good faith with partners across the spectrum to advance the American Dream.

  • • •

  In setting up Lincoln’s quote in his speech, Roosevelt lauded the former president for espousing a view of equality “with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense.” I can think of no better formulation—principled idealism grounded in common sense. As someone who grew up in and still lives in “middle America,” “flyover country,” and/or “bitter-clinger land”—pick your descriptor—it’s painfully obvious how much common sense is lacking in elite circles and the policies they propose. It all goes back to that fact that so few students—who then become professors, lawyers, activists, and policy makers in America’s government and institutions—have a sound grasp of what truly makes America exceptional. I saw a great deal of this during my two years as a graduate student at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Most of the students and faculty were wonderful people with the best of intentions—especially if we left the pesky Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and free market out of the discussion. In a business-related policy class in my first week on campus, one of my classmates openly declared, “I don’t understand the private sector. It seems like just one, big, ambiguous mess to me. How can you control it?” Think about that quote! I could catalog dozens more like it—all of which reveal a preference for centrally planned policies, often in pursuit of solving what they deem to be the “greatest threat” of our time—global climate change. Lots of big-government “idealism,” just not much common sense or humility. And lots of climate change policy, always climate change policy.

  Although I do include a limited list of policy prescriptions later in the book, this is not a policy book. Unlike many of my classmates at Harvard, I don’t believe there is a silver-bullet policy solution to every challenge we face. Instead, wherever possible, I prefer to look at the problem of social immobility through Roosevelt’s commonsense formulation. In order to ensure social mobility and unleash the American Dream, we need less complicated regression analysis from the Harvard Kennedy School and a lot more common sense from Main Street America. Like the folks I go to church with, buy groceries with, and send my kids to school with, most Americans are idealists with common sense—they seek a higher standard of living but don’t expect anyone to give it to them or a government program to solve it for them. They make trade-offs, balance their checkbooks, and put in overtime at work. They ask only that the basic rules of the free-market playing field be the same for everyone, not just a few. The words of Lincoln and Roosevelt both reveal the very same sentiment.

  Today, average Americans—especially aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners—see and sense impediments to social mobility and the American Dream that can’t simply be solved by a good job and an honest day’s work. With people squeezed at the bottom and boxed out from the top, social immobility in America today must be attacked at both the macro-mobility and micro-mobility levels, leveraging solutions that create more wealth and growth opportunities for all (grow the economic pie!), as well as tailored policies (or removal of policies!) to ensure the playing field of opportunity is simple and fair for everyone.

  Even if he could not have foreseen the depth of our modern challenge, Roosevelt anticipated the unique and particular challenges to social mobility—starting at the bottom. The first perpetuates a system of dependence that can “make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and those who do it.” When government programs—welfare or otherwise—cease to provide a “helping hand now and then” and instead create a systemic culture of dependency, they trap those at the bottom rung of society in a cycle of poverty. The problem is not that the programs make people poor, it’s that they often keep them poor. Obviously a good many Americans—for reasons of disability, age, health, or family situation—are in need of some government assistance, and it should be there for them. But when, for instance, the Social Security Disability Insurance program is structured in a way that severely punishes those who attempt to overcome a disability or an accident to rejoin the workforce and earn their own income, government is doing a great job of providing the wrong incentives.

  Roosevelt isn’t referring to the disabled worker trying to get by. He is referring to “the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable” who—“if [they] lie down, it is a waste of time to try and carry [them]; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and those who do it.” This is common sense, but it applies to a relatively small portion of the population. Most Americans, regardless of their station in life, would like a path to a better and independent life. For
those people there still exists today a baked-in, chronic, and institutional social immobility that prevents real equity of opportunity. Oftentimes their family structure is strained—leading to instability for children and short-term thinking for adults. Oftentimes only one parent is in the home, or only one parent working—making employment and child care difficult, let alone saving for the future. Oftentimes the public schools are lacking in both academic excellence and character development, with a lack of options for parents. A small few have real school choices, even fewer a parent or teacher to mentor them individually. If kids do make it to college, they are often saddled with substantial debt and few distinguishable skills. Oftentimes, especially in inner-city communities, children grow up mistrusting authorities and lacking strong role models—turning instead to gangs or crime to fill familial, economic, and moral holes in their lives. Even if family and education are there, citizens looking to improve their lives often lack the technological infrastructure, training, and connections needed to become entrepreneurs or small business owners.

  The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has done a great job in recent years pointing out that local and state governments actually block the path to upward mobility. One bad law can snuff out the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs—particularly low-income ones—with burdensome red tape. As an example, so-called occupational licensing laws at the state and local level do little to protect the public’s health and safety, but they are very good at creating barriers to join these middle-class occupations, fostering the very income inequality that so frustrates the Left. In fact, across many occupations, these laws do little but protect the incomes of the entrenched, licensed few, while freezing out others. AEI cites a 2012 study by the Institute of Justice that found that emergency medical technicians—a career where people come into contact with life-or-death situations—get trained, on average, for about thirty-three days. Yet that same study found that licensing requirements were far lengthier for professions like interior decorators, barbers, hairdressers, and nail salon staff. How does that make sense? This isn’t a “red state versus blue state” phenomenon, either; some states, like Louisiana, that lean conservative have terrible occupational licensing regimes that create a drag on economic growth and opportunity. These types of laws, which only satisfy government’s appetite for more control, squash Roosevelt’s dream of equal opportunity—especially for those at the bottom of the income ladder.

  This phenomenon has also been powerfully demonstrated by the rise of Uber—the smartphone app that allows you to instantly and conveniently order a private car service. Besides making travel much easier for users of the service, Uber has made it very simple for individuals to become Uber drivers, allowing them to choose their schedule and level of service. Sick of dealing with the cab company cartels? Leave, join Uber, and make money. Out of work and need income? Join Uber and make money. Need a second job or want more income on your own schedule? Join Uber and make money. It’s more than an application; it’s an empowerment tool—for users and drivers. But, as you might imagine, the old-line cab companies don’t like Uber because it’s undercutting their bottom line. Cab companies have become stale, unresponsive, and entrenched—meaning ripe for competition like Uber. But rather than innovate to compete, they reach out to political patrons to create new regulations to block Uber under the guise of “safety” and/or “liability.” It’s a classic example of statist stasis that prevents people from taking control of their own social mobility. Republicans and republicans should run these types of regulations over with a truck!

  As Roosevelt also points out, the problem is just as bad—if not worse—at the top of the economic ladder; which brings me to the second impediment to social mobility: a “special privilege” that Roosevelt believes undermines equal opportunity. He calls it an “inequality of reward” in society, saying,

  The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality.

  There will always be unequal amounts of social connection, political connections, and famous last names—I learned this the first time I met a Rockefeller family member at Princeton. Rich, famous, and powerful people are not the problem—and the vast majority add substantial value to America: building businesses that provide job opportunities, running institutions that address problems, and making laws to improve governance. John D. Rockefeller himself, in fact, was an incredibly generous American! The problem comes when there is a sense—and a reality—that many of the rich, famous, and powerful people (the “elite”) in America today play by a different set of political and economic rules than the rest of us. I’m not simply referring to the Enrons and the Solyndras of this world—this is not just a problem of crooks and criminal cronies.

  Today, the inequality that overwhelmingly benefits America’s elites happens mostly at the confluence of big government and big business. Government is so big, so complex, and so intrusive that only elite individuals and large businesses with armies of accountants and lawyers are able to navigate the maze of domestic and international rules, regulations, and mandates. Not only can these elites circumvent the maze of government largesse, but their accountants and lawyers are also able to exploit loopholes, exceptions, and subsidies to ensure they succeed—and prevent others from doing so in the process. Political advantages for elites can also create insurmountable barriers to entry for regular Americans. The elite can do it all legally because their accountants and lawyers work with powerful and well-connected lobbyists who work behind closed doors to craft legislation that benefits—you guessed it—the corporations and powerful individuals. This symbiotic relationship—big government helping big business, and vice versa—is not a new concept; it happened just as much in Roosevelt’s time and even before then. However, the problem today is far worse because government is so much more complex, powerful, and unchecked than it has ever been.

  As Mark Levin points out in The Liberty Amendments, the federal government is “the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider and pension guarantor.” There is almost no aspect of society today that government does not touch in some way. As a result, the “big ambiguous mess” of the Harvard student’s free market has been replaced by the even bigger and even more ambiguous mess of the federal government—and therein lies the problem. In a free market, individuals with the best ideas, best products, and best services make the most money, but in a world controlled more and more by government, the individuals with the best lobbyists, best accountants, and best lawyers can make the most money. Sure, the market still matters, but it matters less—especially for those on the lower end of the economic ladder. From their view, every new law, mandate, regulation, or tax loophole represents yet another rung they must climb just to start a business or expand an existing business. Moreover, while they are merely surviving the tax code, the elites are manipulating it to their advantage. Even incentives like minority-hiring preferences are best exploited by big businesses more interested in the tax break and the public relations boost than so-called social justice.

  This is not a Democrat problem or a Republican problem—this is an American problem, and a serious threat to our republic. The Left leverages the problem to attack the wealthy and instigate class warfare—a practice Roosevelt called “the prime factor” in the fall of great republics. Unfortunately, the Right has not done a good job providing a nondivisive, non-class-warfare, and pro-market alternative. The Left talks about pulling down the rich while the Right talks mostly about “pulling up the bootstraps.” Conservatives must also demand this Roosevelt mantra, from top to bottom: “the only safe standard is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, without regard to his profess
ion or to his station in life.”

  We should do everything we can to level the opportunity playing field by making it easier for the folks at the top to fail and easier for the those at the bottom to succeed. At the top, no individual, no business, and no institution is too big to fail in America. America was built as much by failure as it was by success. Conservatives should fight big-government, big-business cronyism that amounts to nothing more than riskless corporate welfare for the rich in return for bottomless campaign cash for politicians. We should slash corporate loopholes, end rigged tax incentives, and stop picking corporate winners and losers. For those at the bottom, we must fight for a system that reduces barriers to opportunity and empowers people to help themselves. We should make accountants irrelevant by dramatically simplifying the tax code, we should put lawyers out of business by drastically reducing regulations, we should invest in technology and infrastructure for those who need it the most, and we should give every student a real opportunity at success by fundamentally overhauling America’s education system.

  In order to attack opportunity inequality from the top and bottom, conservatives must also come to grips with the fact that, with the deck so stacked in favor of elites, simply “increasing liberty” for individuals is not sufficient to ensure access to social mobility up the economic ladder. Giving a few more citizens more freedom will not necessarily result in better outcomes, especially if those citizens are not pursuing good citizenship. Opportunity is an application of freedom, not the definition of it. Therefore, if average Americans have a few more individual freedoms but the elites are still able to manipulate the system to their advantage, then additional freedom is utterly insufficient. More individual freedom in the hands of those still facing a stacked deck does not necessarily improve social mobility. In order for real equality of opportunity to proliferate, conservatives must be just as aggressive and unabashed in fighting against forms of corporate cronyism and political collusion as they are about fighting for individual liberty. Finally, at the end of the day, we also must fight to advance policies—left or right—that facilitate and forge the making of more of Roosevelt’s “good citizens.”