'Meshing Well

Devone Tucker argues that if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) overcomes the assorted controversies surrounding his presidential campaign and defeats Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) in November, he could cause the American conservative pundit class to finally get its act together. The black conservative Republican blogger writes: "Many of the right’s media voices became lazy and complacent during the Bush years. It hasn’t been a complete collapse, but the lack of intellectually energy from the conservative punditocracy has been rather disturbing. One of the few nice things about the Clinton years was that the right, galvanized by Clinton’s 1992 Presidential victory, rededicated itself to clearly expressing conservative principles and explaining the flaws of the Clinton vision. The mid-to-late 1990s were a golden age for William F. Buckley, Thomas Sowell, George Will and others who, with wisdom and humor, highlighted the intellectual flaws of the left and the brighter alternatives of the right. Buckley, Sowell and Will stayed on their game during the Bush years, but too many conservative pundits lost their mojo during the early- and mid-2000s. They began to write and speak as though the left-wing vision had been thoroughly repudiated by the electorate (despite the closeness of the 2000 election), and slowly but surely substituted right-wing jabberwocky for reasoned conservative argument. It’s almost as though prominent media conservatives took a collective intellectual vacation during the Bush years. The sharpness and clarity of the 1990s had morphed into sloganeering and condemnation; where one used to find intellectual depth, one now found thin thinking. The conservative punditocracy reached its nadir in the two years immediately following Bush’s re-election. We were told by prominent conservative pundits that the left had been thoroughly discredited: John Kerry’s loss was characterized as proof that America had finally realized the 'progressive' vision was intellectually bankrupt, and that America was, for all intents and purposes, a red country. The fact that the far-left Kerry had received a troublingly high fifty-nine million votes was intentionally ignored; according to most conservative commentators, the right had finally won the American political and cultural war."

Mr. Tucker continues his commentary about conservative pundits: "Only now, as the GOP’s fortunes fade due to concerns about the economy and the Iraq War, do major conservative pundits understand how mistaken they were. They’re beginning to realize that they should have never stopped teaching, should have never abandoned efforts to explain to the politically unschooled why conservatism works and liberalism doesn’t. The conservative punditocracy should have realized that just because Bush won didn’t mean that the country had moved in a conservative direction; they should have retained a 1990s mentality instead of prematurely declaring victory in the 2000s. One of the few prominent conservative pundits who kept his nose to the grindstone during the 2000s and refused to become intellectually lazy is Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor for National Review and a prolific writer whose work as appeared in Time, the New York Times and countless other publications. Ponnuru has been a blessing for those of us who desire sharp, reasoned commentary from a conservative perspective; his work is fine dining, as opposed to the greasy fast food that has comprised too much of 2000s-era conservative punditry."