I am delighted to be the first Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar in Social Welfare Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar Douglas J. Besharov

In 1999, Joe Jacobs published “The Compassionate Conservative: Assuming Responsibility and Respecting Human Dignity.” Hence, on this occasion, it seems altogether appropriate to explore the question: What is a “compassionate conservative”?

This is a topic particularly close to my heart because so many of my friends and relatives are liberals who really do not seem to understand how someone can be both a “conservative” and “compassionate,” that is, care about people.

Once, after I gave a talk on early childhood education, a prominent liberal academic said to me, in a tone of surprise, “Doug, I guess you really don’t want to hurt poor children.” Let me tell you, there is really no polite response to a statement like that, although I suppose I could have lowered my eyes and said: “Thank you.”

What, then, is a compassionate conservative? Today, of course, the phrase is most identified with President George W. Bush, who uses it to characterize his approach to domestic policy. But, even though the president has made a number of major statements on the subject,[1] as far as I can tell, he has yet to lay out a complete description of what he has in mind. That may well be a deliberate strategy designed to give the president the flexibility to make political compromises. But the concept is too important to be confined to the purposes of one political leader, so I would like to describe what it means to me. In doing so, I am borrowing from Joe’s wonderful book.

First of all, compassionate conservatives want to help their fellow human beings, want an end to unnecessary suffering, want an end to racial discrimination, and want to see greater equality of opportunity--and they recognize government’s vital role in addressing these and other social goals.

Actually, many of my conservative friends ask why these good intentions are limited to “compassionate” conservatives. They are offended by the suggestion that, without such an express qualification, a conservative is not compassionate. So, consider the phrase to be an unsubtle, but apparently needed, signal: One can be a conservative and still be a social reformer.

Nevertheless, despite what many liberal journalists seem to think, a compassionate conservative is not someone who, although a friend of big business, otherwise supports Ted Kennedy’s entire legislative agenda. For, compared to liberals, even the most compassionate of conservatives are more likely to recognize the limits of government’s ability to address social problems--and that, in turn, affects how they approach social problems.

Notice I said “more likely,” for intensity is really the point. It is not that liberals cannot have concerns about the size of government and the efficacy of government action, they are just less worried about them than conservatives—or they may feel more strongly about the need to “do something.”

With that relativity in mind, let me briefly sketch six principles that I think underlie the compassionate conservative approach to social problems:

• A preference for limited government;
• The desire to means test or otherwise target government benefits;
• A concern about behavioral consequences of assistance;
• Deference to mediating institutions;
• Respect for private choice, often in the form of markets; and
• Humility bred from disappointing experience--and the likelihood of unintended
  consequences.

A preference for limited government. Compassionate conservatives are prepared to use government to further important social goals, but only in the absence of viable private solutions. For, they expect government programs to be less efficient, less effective, more likely to have unforeseen, and even harmful, consequences--and to be extremely difficult to terminate. Liberals often see this preference for limited government as nothing more than a selfish desire to avoid higher tax rates (as well as callous indifference to human suffering and inequality).

From a broader perspective, conservatives see big government as stifling creativity and enterprise, and as a danger to individual liberty--in small ways, if not big ones. No one really knows how much government is too much government, so conservatives tend to be wary of all expansions because they fear that every expansion is part of an unchecked upward spiral: The larger government is, the more voters are dependent on it for benefits, subsidies, and jobs--which means that politics is even more about the distribution of government benefits, which, in turn, creates pressures for yet higher taxes and yet more government. As Winston Churchill once wrote, probably borrowing from Sir Alexander Tytler, the 18th century Scottish historian: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”[2]

A desire to means test or otherwise target government benefits. Wariness about universal programs is a corollary of limited government and low taxes. The argument in favor of universal programs and against means testing is, crudely, that, only if the middle class is hooked on the program will there be sufficient political support for it. Titmuss’ argued that “separate discriminatory services for poor people have always tended to be poor quality services.”[3]Perhaps--but this is one of those widely repeated political axioms with little or no actual evidence supporting it.

And, compared to universal social welfare programs--like Social Security and Medicare--targeted ones are much less expensive and, if properly focused, can do as much good (and perhaps more good). Too often, programs that seek to serve both the middle class and the poor do a poor job serving the poor. Student aid being a good example. Costs have skyrocketed and benefits have shrunk, because of the great cost of serving so many nonpoor students. As a result, the government shifted from grants (needed by low-income students but inappropriate for the middle class) to loans (a great burden on the poor but fine for the middle class).

A concern about the behavioral consequences of assistance. Regardless of political orientation, most Americans want to help the unemployed, the disabled, the single mother struggling to keep her family together, and so forth. Conservatives believe that no-stringsattached assistance to these and other disadvantaged groups has often been a catastrophe--creating even more dependency and a fertile ground for all sorts of social problems.

Again, it is not that liberals are oblivious to such concerns, it’s just that they are more worried about leaving someone out of the social safety net than they are about increasing levels of dependence. Thus, most conservatives are happy with the tough strictures of the 1996 welfare reform law, but when the law was up for reauthorization, many liberals pushed for various exceptions to work requirements and the five-year time limit on benefits.

A deference to mediating institutions. These days, everyone seems eager to harness the energies--and legitimacy--of family, neighborhood, church, and other societal groupings for this or that social priority. These are the voluntary associations that are the glue of society. Edmund Burke called them society’s “little platoon[s].”[4] We at AEI tend to call them “mediating structures.”[5]

But the key word here is “deference.” Deference means letting mediating institutions do it “their way,” in programming, in staffing, in their tendency to be judgmental, and even in their reliance on religious faith. Too many people (on the left and the right) want to use mediating institutions to further government’s objectives, in government’s way. A former head of Catholic Charities once complained to me: “Government funding does not help us to do what we want to do. It just gets us to add our own money to what the government wants us to do. And then they tell us how to do it.”

We should appreciate mediating institutions for what they seem to accomplish--without changing them into institutions that might be much less effective. Of course, there is a limit to what private institutions should be allowed to do with public funds, but compassionate conservatism starts with greater initial respect for the institution’s own way of doing things.

Respect for private choice, often in the form of markets. Just as compassionate conservatives have a greater faith in or at least greater deference to the ability of mediating institutions to do the right thing, so too do they have a greater faith in the ability of most individuals--including most of the poor--to make sound decisions about their own lives.

How many times do we hear it said, for example, that poor mothers--all mothers, actually--cannot be trusted to choose good child care for their children? That is why advocates push for the heavy regulation of child care, even though that dim view of parental judgment has been proven wrong by the successful use of child care vouchers, a federal guarantee since 1992.

Private choice is a value in itself, but it does so much more. When properly channeled, the individual choices of hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of people about the government services they receive translate into market forces many times more efficient--and less political--than the top-down decision making that characterizes most current programming.

Notice that I have said nothing about school vouchers, and that is because, like a true conservative, I would like to see a lot more experience (and rigorous evaluation) before we take the final plunge into full-scale implementation. We should give them a fair test, but it should be just that, a test.

And that brings me to my final point.

Humility bred from disappointing experiences--and the likelihood of unintended consequences. Here the lines get blurry. Many political conservatives are anything but humble about their social policy ideas, while many liberals display a healthy skepticism about overly-ambitious designs. So, perhaps this principle refers to “conservatives” with a very small “c.”

The plain fact is that contemporary social welfare efforts are strewn with programmatic failures, unintended consequences, and just plain damage to individuals, neighborhoods, and, yes, even whole cities. It took more than a generation, for example, for downtown New Haven to recover from the federal government’s catastrophic urban renewal programs of the 1960s. A humility of purpose and design should permeate social planning.

Sometimes, when a problem seems bad enough, some people want to do “something,” no matter how unproven or unlikely it is to work. But, sometimes, being a compassionate conservative means seeing a problem and thinking that, no matter how bad it is, there may be nothing to do about it--at least right now.

But that is not the end of the inquiry. For, being a compassionate conservative also means being willing to engage in broad experimentation--even with ideas with which one does not agre--coupled with rigorous and honest evaluation.

One additional point about experimentation: In our constitutional system, humility of design includes a general, but rebuttable, preference for state action over federal action. It is simply easier to correct past mistakes in a state capital, than it is in Washington.

* * *

I have labeled these six principles “compassionate conservatism,” but, actually, I believe that they are relevant to any sound social policy making--made from either the left or the right. One does not have to be a conservative to be wary of the ill-effects of government policies. Remember the “tough liberals” of the Kennedy Administration?

True compassion, liberal or conservative, means wanting programs that stand the best chance of helping the disadvantaged--and the least chance of hurting them.

Notes

1. See, e.g., President, “Remarks by the President to the United States Conference of Mayors,” remarks made at the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center, Detroit, Mich., June 25, 2001, available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010625-2.html, accessed January 15, 2003; President, “President Promotes Compassionate Conservatism,” remarks made at Parkside Hall, San Jose, Calif., April 30, 2002, available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020430-5.html, accessed January 15, 2003; and President, “President Bush Implements Key Elements of his Faith-Based Initiative,” remarks made at the Downtown Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, Pa., December 12, 2002, available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021212-3.html, accessed January 15, 2003.

2. Alexander Tytler, Cycle of Democracy (n.p., 1770).

3. Richard M. Titmuss, Commitment to Welfare (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1968), p. 134.

4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by J. G. A. Pocock(Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), p. 41.

5. Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society, 2d ed., edited by Michael Novak (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1996), p. 149.