The Death of Conservatism

by Sam Tanenhaus

Sam Tanenhaus’s essay “Conservatism Is Dead” prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in The New Republic in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has been split between two consensus-driven “realists” who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement “revanchists” who distrust government and society–and often find themselves at war with America itself. Eventually, Tanenhaus writes, the revanchists prevailed, and the result is the decadent “movement conservatism” of today, a defunct ideology that is “profoundly and defiantly unconservative–in its arguments and ideas, its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision.”But there is hope for conservatism. It resides in the examples of pragmatic leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and thinkers like Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. Each came to understand that the true role of conservatism is not to advance a narrow ideological agenda but to engage in a serious dialogue with liberalism and join with it in upholding “the politics of stability.” Conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of this honorable tradition. It is their only route back to the center of American politics. At once succinct and detailed, penetrating and nuanced, The Death of Conservatism is a must-read for Americans of any political persuasion.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of both The New York Times Book Review and the Week in Review section of the Times. From 1999 to 2004 he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he wrote often on politics.

His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. Tanenhaus’s previous book, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews

[brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

the world seems to want to order itself bilaterally. nature, that unfeeling uncaring wench, seems to have a thing for it. physically we have two arms, two eyes, two hands, two testicles, two breasts, etc... and we mostly organize ourselves into bilateral groupings: liberal/conservative, republican/democrat, capitalist/communist, etc... there's a mystical component to numbers (albeit, usually overblown by religinuts and new-age morons) just as there's a mystical component to symmetry. and that thought leads to this one:

one would imagine that the current nuclear bullshit with iran has gotta be somewhat comforting to lots and lots of people, yeah? it has recently come out that margaret thatcher, just before the berlin wall fell, told the USSR that we didn't want the wall down, that it wasn't in our interest. she had something there. sentimental old men concerned with their legacies and limousine liberals may have wanted the USSR in the dustbin of history but, for many, the great dialectic, the USA/USSR showdown, really worked for the west. politicians, pundits, and the media tried to put all that shit on al-qaeda and international terrorism, to supplant one myth with another, but it never really took. and so we have a kind of cold war resurgence: obama routinely being called a communist, a socialist, a facist, etc... (communist is a tremendous brand name; it nearly always works. and it's doubly great b/c most american fucktards have no idea what it even means) -- and now iran? having nukes? it'll never match the great 20th century dialectic, but it definitely locks into the semi-mystical bilateral symmetry that has always worked very well for nations. it's a start.


the book: well, it lacks the precision of an essay and the in-depth analysis of a full-length book. it functions as a somewhat effective, if too brief, survey of american conservatism.

tanenhaus uses Edmund Burke (el jefe of conservatism) as his starting point and traces the trajectory to Benjamin Disraeli, Michael Oakeshotte, and then on to america: from Eisenhower to Buckley/Reagan/Goldwater, to arrive, finally, at Bush/Limbaugh.

tanenhaus's theory is that american conservativism split in half: on one side stand the 'realists' or 'burkean' conservatives (Eisenhower, H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton) and on the other we have the 'movement' conservatives (Nixon, Reagan, Bush). they differ in that the burkeans believe in government, in stability, and in classical conservative belief -- the latter are revanchists who see all through a narrow ideological prism (government is bad; elites and intellectuals spoil the soul of america; etc) and who put party orthodoxy before stability and consensus.

it seems the 'movement' conservatives (not really conservatives at all, actually) have won. but it's a hollow victory, eh? rove's prediction of a 'permanent majority' didn't really pan out, did it?

[Leonard Woods · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a complete waste of time. Like Todd's excellent reviews mentions, it's basically a masturbatory exercise for the literary class on one of their favorite topics - how stupid people who disagree with them are.

The basic argument is that Conservatives abandoned Tanenhaus's interpretation of Edmund Burke, and so modern Conservatives aren't really Conservatives. This is because modern Conservatives (i.e. not of the vein Tanenhaus likes) don't believe government should grow and do too much for its citizens. Therefore, since Conservatives don't accept what Liberals and Tanenhaus believe, they're completely detached from reality, only concerned with ideology, and have nothing to offer America.

Seriously. The book is then filled in with cherry picked examples of how Liberals are so pragmatic and intelligent in adapting to the times while conservatives are blabbering racists. The book offers absolutely nothing of substance to the political debate. Tanenhaus doesn't demonstrate even a basic understanding of economic issues or anything except copious quoting and name dropping. It's a one sided rewriting of history, and Tanenhaus should be embarassed by the intellectual immaturity on display.

[Todd Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Death of Conservatism is what passes for an intellectual effort in some circles. Basically it consists of an endless series of quotes from other sources lightly strung together with some connecting verbiage. Here’s a typical paragraph:

What America needed, Kristol proposed, was a renewed “national purpose” that could overcome “the ideological barrenness of the liberal and conservative creeds”. Later in the decade, Kristol expanded this argument, urging Republicans to give “comprehensive thought to the question of what a conservative welfare state would look like” since, to be realistic, “the idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy.”

I believe “what this book needs”, is “fewer quotations” and more “substance”. Perhaps it would make the text “less annoying” and more “readable”. Of course this approach may have resulted in my “supercilious literary contemporaries” calling my “erudition into question”.

Beyond the literary wanking, does Tanenhaus have any deep insight into the train wreck that is movement conservatism? Nothing that isn’t patently transparent to anyone paying marginal attention. The Republicans have abandoned anything resembling a cohesive political philosophy in exchange for what psychologists technically refer to as a “disturbing mental illness”. Bereft of ideas they’ve opted instead to shout, stamp their feet, throw tantrums, and incite the deranged lunatics hovering about their fringe to commit atrocious acts of violence. The sane among their base, appalled by the rampant irrationality, continue to abandon the party leaving only a handful of diehard angry, white and senile old men to mumble incoherently to their nursing attendants and shake their arthritic fists in impotent rage.

[Greg Heaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really falls apart when he gets to Watergate. The detail and texture of 'conservatism's' founding is great, but he just glosses over the 'movement' from 70s to '08 when it was written. Reckoning what 'conservative' populism actually is -- how Buckley became Rush and Rush turned into Fox News -- is as important as how the old Bolsheviks turned into libertarians.

Still, a concise useful resource on how the 'conservative movement' started in opposition to the New Deal and Roosevelt.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of an essay than a book. Not very compelling reading, but a good overall summary of conservatism over the past 80 years. Most definitely written subjectively from a left-center perspective, the title reflects more of the writer's hope than the reality.

[Zack · Rating 2 out of 5]

My curiosity about this book stemmed from its pointed, provocative title, and the willingness to give it a chance. I knew or assumed that Tanenhaus could not possibly have been as naive to believe that the election of Obama was a definitive repudiation of conservatism, given the seemingly uphill battle the administration has had almost since beginning office against a Congress that its own party ostensibly dominated for two years. Having first published the book in 2009 (I read a 2010 edition with an added epilogue and perhaps some slight revisions), Tanenhaus indeed anticipates this possibility, recognizing and dismissing the constant, pendulous swing of elections. As for the thesis set forth by the title, for most of the book Tanenhaus laments the death of a particular kind of conservatism, which would seem to further clear that up. Dubbed the "realist," as opposed to "revanchist" (and alternately, movement conservatism), this is a politics that descends from Burke and Disraeli, and from ex-Soviet sympathizers like James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers. It's a politics of consensus and compromise, of preserving whatever it inherits, even if it might be opposed to the particular status quo of its day. (It seems hard to believe, of course, that any conservative leader with the authority and power to do otherwise would accept a status quo s/he morally or intellectually opposed.) This is a conservatism marked by "modus vivendi," not the familiar M.O. of destroying any aspect of civil society that might have government's stamp on it; instead, it is (theoretically) above ideology. But ultimately, Tanenhaus tries to have it both ways: movement conservatism is now itself dead, according to him, because it killed classical, realist conservatism.

There are other such contradictions throughout this little book, such as the fact that he tries to make his case based exclusively on presidents and their contemporary political theorists and public intellectuals, only to suggest plainly in the conclusion that we have had a fixation with the presidency throughout an entire period (the '30s-'80s) for which now-obscure "master legislators" were truly responsible. Or that positions held by all of the presidents and conservative icons (from Burnham and Chambers to Irving Kristol and William F. Buckley) he examines evolved or reversed outright at various points throughout their careers; by his account, if not these men's own, their positions could be quite fluid. I don't know that many people would disagree that movement conservatism dominated from 1968-1992, or even on through GWB's two terms, with the 12 years Carter and Clinton got in there as minor breaks (though Tanenhaus casts the former as a conservative Democrat and suggests that the latter, like Obama, owes much to classical conservatism). But in the account presented here, each of the presidents (excepting GWB) is shown to have oscillated between the realist and revanchist positions. Nixon campaigned in '60 and '68 as an opponent of the welfare state only to enlarge government throughout his first term; although he's remembered by acolytes and enemies alike as an anti-government crusader, Reagan apparently disappointed conservatives early on, and while he cut taxes, he increased spending and thereby enlarged the state. His engagement with the Soviets, like Nixon's adoption of detente and opening up to China, is cast here in the classical conservative ideal of negotiation and compromise, instead of the movement's impulse for imperialism and liberation (a legacy, again, that would be picked up by GWB).

Those are but a few of the contradictions that make the argument in this persuasively written tract collapse upon itself. The other issue I had with it is Tanenhaus' own centrist-liberalism. The book has been commended for critiquing conservative and liberal movements in equal measure, even though it's clear Tanenhaus is himself liberal and his argument can have no conceivable appeal to movement conservatives, Tea Partiers, moral-majority types and so on. To address the first part of that, his critique of liberalism, particularly since Reagan, is obviously not as fleshed out, simply by virtue of the fact that that's not the subject here. But something in particular toward the end stuck out, and rubbed me the wrong way. "Even as the nation's political center had shifted," Tanenhaus writes, "many on the left remained in thrall to 'the New Politics' of the Vietnam period. They confused the programmatic inclusiveness of 'identity politics' with a true majoritarianism, even as large blocs of working-class voters deserted the party." I feel like this is at most half-right, but gets it wrong in that the elected members of the Democratic party have not, for better or worse, represented that strand of the left in ages, if they ever did, as a sizable presence. Moreover, while working-class voters may well have deserted the party over the years over, among other reasons, social or "moral" issues, I don't think it's fair to dismiss as "identity politics" the commitment of the left to equality for women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBT community.

Now that I've registered my complaints, I'll say that I did enjoy the middle parts of this book, despite any internal contradictions; these were, after all, devoted to history. One doesn't have to accept the author's conclusions to enjoy the richness of the story. The book is a sort of gloss on political thought in the postwar period, focused on the right, and it takes as it subject a fascinating piece of our intellectual history. Though I emerged as frustrated with the right as I had before entering, I did along the way gain an appreciation for the nuances to conservatism and particular thinkers, even if these same people (to say nothing of their latter-day followers) would later revise, disavow and apparently forget to have ever held such positions.

[Jack D]

Absolutely libbing out rn

Tanenhaus is impressively wrong in the opening pages as he pronounces that yes conservatism is finally dead and the Obama administration killed it… HUH!??

[Lucas Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased the book shortly after reading Christopher Hedges War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. That book had spun my head around pretty good, and I was searching for more information on Hedges. I watched a panel discussion with Hedges, Tanenhaus, and a third panelist whose name I can not recall. This book was intriguing and had a great title.

I pulled it off the shelf of my classroom because I increasingly felt like the conservative character of my teenage students political opinions no longer matched up with any definition of conservative that I had. What is conservatism though? I hoped that this book would help me articulate something that had begun to consume me during the home stretch of this political cycle.

This book is structured as an argument that the Conservative movement in American politics entered a new phase following the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency. The "death" part refers to this new phase being a betrayal of the fundamental principles of conservatism. What connects these dots is a brisk history of conservatism with lots of mentions of Burke and Disraeli.

I enjoyed the book. I underlined a lot. I'm furious I didn't read the Daniel Patrick Moynihan/neoconservatism chapter in 2011/2012, and in the end I agree with Tanenhaus, though I think he his argument sounds overly optimistic and quaint in the face of the alt-right/white nationalist dumpster fire that has become the conservative movement (at the moment, I'm not convinced that the 2016 election is more of an aberration the the dawning of a new era, but now who sounds overly optimistic and quaint).

If you've read any of Rick Perlstein's three books on the conservative movement and enjoyed them, if you've ever questioned whether or not William F. Buckley had some good ideas under the bluster and Vietnam cheerleading, if you want to go high when they go low, if you've read a biography of Disraeli, or if you've written a fair to middling masters thesis on the Moynihan Report, I can't recommend this slim volume enough.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is surely one of the most ridiculous books that I've read in a long time. It's only redeeming quality was in the few pages it spent reviewing history. Other than that, the whole proposition of the book is silly; to wit, the Conservative party is dead in America unless they become more like the Democrats. Values and visions are not to be maintained, but rather, should flow and change with the desires of the populace, whatever those desires might be. Forget about giving people real choices in politics, just give them what they want, in Tanenhaus's view, the nanny state. In fact, according to Tanenhaus, America is a nanny state and has been for most of the past century. (He may have a point there.) But since this is what the people are crying out for, politicians must give it to them! Because income taxes, heavy government regulation and subsidization have all been around for so long, Tanenhaus argues, Barack Obama is actually a Conservative!!!

Thank God that's over...

3/25/2013 -- The National Review recently wrote the following article in response to an article by Mr. Tanenhaus in The New Republic: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/ar.... It seems to pertinent to this book, that I have to include it as an addendum to my review.

[Krishan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent short essay tracing the intellectual history of movement conservatism, from its origins as a political philosophy developed by disillusioned ex-Trotskyists (Whitaker Chambers, James Burnham etc.), to the American conservative movement founded by their students (W.F. Buckley, Russell Kirk) to its success in the 70's and 80's as a governing philosophy, and finally to its spectacular implosion during the Bush administration.
This book is important because it shows us how a political movement can become beholden to its political embodiment, and therefore (in the case of conservatism) become a negation of its own principles. The American conservative movement today has a major streak of radical authoritarianism, and espouses policy ideas which, if implemented, would mean a radical restructuring of American society. Conservatism, properly understood, is best practiced as a cautious and skeptical attitude toward change in government policy, not a plan for 'Taking Back America' revanchism

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an overrated, muddled gesture, widely reviewed and somewhat discussed but practically outdated. Here is Tanenhaus’s picture: there is Classical Conservatism (Edmund Burke, Disraeli) and there is this new-fangled Movement Conservatism (Barry Goldwater to the Tea Party). Classical is moderate and good—exemplified by Eisenhower and, gasp! Bill Clinton; Movement is radical and bad—see Reagan and Palin. The story is too convenient and sweeping to be accurate. He also complicates the picture by locating conservatism (good or bad) with the Republican Party, then problematizing his own binary by noting that, eg., Reagan oversaw an expansion of government and Nixon made some very progressive policies (EPA, Affirmative Action, Détente). Tanenhaus also equates to the things politicos write in journals or say in speeches with policies enacted once in power. Otherwise, this book is an interesting march through a lot of ‘important’ articles and failed campaigns of conservatism(s) past.

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always was a sucker for a good title.

[Nic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book to get a sense of some of the debates and concerns among conservatives in the 20th century through the present. I’m not invested in any way in Tanenhaus’s ideological argument for a more Burkean conservatism that favors preservation of political and social institutions over what he considers to be the more destructive “revanchist” strain of “movement conservatism.” I did find the book useful in his historical tracking of certain conservative figures and their impact on their party’s politics. He doesn’t seem to understand much about leftist politics or racial politics; he also confines his understanding of conservatism to its intellectuals (rather then looking much at what the actual conservative base thinks) and does nothing to unpack any of these figures’ ideological commitments to a racial, classed, gendered, and heteronormative political order. What he does do well is tell a good story about a certain crisis in conservative thought in the wake of Obama’s election. I wouldn’t say it do a bang up job predicting Trumpism and I wonder how he’d revise his work in light of more recent developments, but I’m also not curious enough to look.

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Besides being dated, this 20 year old "long essay" is remarkable for its lack of specifics and its tired call for "responsible conservativim" in the burkean tradition. Y'know supporting the elite institutions and agreeing to change in a liberal/left direction - but slowly.

In Tanenhaus dream world, liberals and "true conservatives" would be united against Rightwing populism and leftwing radicalism. The American people would get an endless stream of Barrack Obama's oppposed by "True Conservatives" like Susan Collins and David French. "Radicals" like Limbaugh, Buchanan, JD Vance, New Gingrich, and Sarah Palin would get the heave ho. Needless to say, Trump would be the Tanenhaus' number 1 villian today.

One of the many reasons the Tanenhaus dream world doesnt exist is there's no "Responsible Liberalism/leftism" for "responsible conservatives" to work with. Since 2009, the liberal establishment has gone further and further to left. And become more and more authoritarian. Today, it supports open borders and no enforcement of immigration laws, jailing Republicans who oppose them, unlimited Government spending, getting rid of the filibuster, political censorship, election fraud, and defunding the police. During the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020, the "Responsible Liberals" supported the violence and looting as "justified protests against racism" and labeled them "mostly peaceful".

Given that, "Burkean Conservatives" like David French or Rod Dreher have simply become irrelevant. One can no more be a "Classical conservative" in 2025, then one could be in 1936 Spain or 1917 Russia.

[Andrew Breza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sam Tanenhaus argues that conservatism as a movement split into two competing forces, which can be roughly described as the philosophers and the opportunists. The latter group gained power and turned conservatism from something dedicated to opposing bad ideas instead of "conserving" good ones. I found the argument only slightly helpful in understanding the past two decades of political change in America. The book is dramatically outdated due to the election of President Trump and his bending of the word "conservatism" to mean "Anything I happen to like at the moment."

For a much longer (and arguably better) treatment of the same subject, check out George Will's The Conservative Sensibility.

[Ethan Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short history of Movement Conservatism in the US. Tanenhaus's guiding thesis is that by 2008 American liberals had become "conservative" in the sense of preserving the status quo, whereas "Conservatives" had become revolutionary, driven primarily to overturn the status quo. Hence, he somewhat surprisingly ends his book titled "The Death of Conservatism" with the assertion that the US was entering a profoundly conservative period with the election of President Barack Obama.

What was interesting to me was that this book was published not in 2017 but in 2009. Read today, it gives an impression that much less than one might have thought changed from 2008 to 2016.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still not entirely clear on WHY the author thinks conservatism died, although I think it is something along the lines of the party ceasing to value contemplation about itself and its future. I do understand and agree with his characterization of the party defining itself by what it seems to prevent or destroy rather than what it seeks to preserve.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting look at the history of conservatism. I do not understand conservatives so it was interesting to read some of the theory behind the ridiculousness you see now.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this was published in 2012, this books offers some valuable lessons for today's so-called "conservatives." Tanenhaus proves to be prophetic in his analysis.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

So what if I have been Sam Tanenahaus-pilled. This is quick but a prescient assessment of where the Republican Party was headed.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, is well known for his writings on conservative politics. He is the author of "Whittaker Chambers: A Biography" and of an equally-exhaustive forthcoming biography of William Buckley. This book is sandwiched between those. It was first published in 2009, in the wake of Barack Obama's stunning ascendancy of the Presidency; it was updated with an Epilogue from the author in 2010.

This is a brief, concise history of conservatism. Tanenbaus takes us to the classic English definition of conservatism formulated by Edmund Burke, which was based on the exercise of pragmatism and government activism to bestow the greatest benefits to, and to protect, society. The greatest practitioner of Burke's principles, in the following century in England, was Benjamin Disraeli, who maintained a philosophy of using government to promote social harmony. The Burke/Disraeli model can be seen in the governance of Republican and, according to Tanenhaus, Democrats (namely, Bill Clinton) in the last century in America. Tanenhaus' main point is that the Republican Party has been split for about seventy five years between those conservatives who believe in government's mandate to adjust to changing conditions (the Burkean model) and those revanchists who distrust government and society. The latter have lately wrested power from within the Republican Party, causing it to lose its footing.

Tanenhaus substitutes the well-known two-party description of American politics with Samuel Lubell's Sun and Moon paradigm. In this view, one party enjoys the majority at a time; this Sun Party has the "out" or Moon party in the opposition, waiting to find the key to building a ruling majority. An example was the 1960's, when the Democratic "Sun" Party held the oval office as well as the majority of Congress until 1968, when huge upheavals in American life propelled the Republican Party out of its Moon orbit. Contrary to today's party philosophies, the effect of 60's liberal leadership, particularly in the forces loosed by the Kennedy Presidency, was to influence a new generation of leftists away from established centers of government power while the country's middle-class dissatisfaction and fear of campus upheavals and burning cities directed the emerging Republican candidates and campaigns to embrace the normalcy and stability.

This very nice history of conservatism in electoral politics in the late-twentieth century frequently brushes against the persona of Bill Buckley. He was influenced greatly by Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, but only the latter became associated with Buckley's influential "National Review", partly due to his early revancnhist slant. By 1960, Buckley had given up "Movement Conservatism" in favor of advocating the equating of conservative values to the needs of maintaining a civil society. He denounced the influence on conservatives of the John Birch Society (which is loved and exalted today by Glenn Beck and Ron Paul ), while pulling the conservative movement closer to the American political center by gaining the support of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Senator John Tower.

The current Republican Party's position is to bring the ideological zealots from the margins and give them the spotlight as the party's emerging leaders. Gone is pragmatism in leadership, intellectual courage or independent thought in favor of conformity to orthodoxy in order to grab power to win in the next round of elections. As Tanenhaus notes, the party's House and Senate caucuses are firmly committed to ideological rigidity. This wedding of office-holders to the politics of shared enmity and to the rhetoric of accusatory protest is described in the Epilogue as having increased from 2009 to 2010.

The addition of an Epilogue in the manner used in "The Death of Conservatism" can be useful in keeping the main treatise fresh, in the face of rapidly unfolding events. This can be kind of a two-edged sword, because you can't just keep adding yearly Epilogues, as events continue to evolve. Since the book's last update of 2010, the Tea Party has flexed its muscle by getting enough of its candidates elected in the mid-terms to give the Republicans control of the House. These new Representatives are so tightly bound by Movement Conservatism that they exalt their dedication to supporting the party's ideological positions at the expense of pursuing their elected responsibility to protecting the interests of their constituents, as evidenced, for example, in their determination to eliminate the social contract guarantees to the elderly of Social Security and Medicare. The political circus in Washington, as Obama calls it, continues to get revancher and revancher.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a bit misleading. No doubt it was chosen to entice readers after the 2008 election. What the book is actually about is more like the collapse of modern American conservatism's intellectual authority and its seriousness, not its ultimate electoral death. As we saw in 2010, 2014, and now in 2016, the Right is experiencing a resurgence. You can't say a political orientation like conservatism is dead when the Republican Party, which has moved to the right during the Obama era, controls the presidency and Congress in 2017.

A lot of Tanenhaus's description of the Right holds up: Its intellectual rigidity, demand for orthodoxy over pragmatism, etc. Tanenhaus also goes into the Right's failures, i.e., the continued growth of government even under "Government is the problem" Ronald Reagan. When a movement has such little success, the pragmatists are pushed out in favor of the "revanchists," as Tanenhaus calls them. These are ideologues that more or less dig into their feet and refuse to compromise, even for worthwhile policy goals, because they view the other side as evil. We could certainly do with less Manichaeism on both the Right and the Left.

That said, while Tanenhaus's account of the modern American right is perceptive, his views on Burke and Disraeli's conservatism are bound to receive critiques from conservative writers today. I'm not sure if Tanenhaus understands Burkean and Disraeli conservatism better than actual conservatives do. Tanenhaus is also not a historian or specialist of Burke or Disraeli, so readers have to assume he's taken in the full context of their work in his analysis. And I'm sure conservatives will laugh off Tanenhaus's suggestion that Barack Obama is a conservative. Obama is conservative in the sense that he's not interested in rocking the boat the way someone like Bernie Sanders would want to. But Obama did take action in expanding the EPA, pushing through new financial regulations, and restructuring the health insurance markets. This is more than what Clinton ever achieved.

This book is interesting reading post-2016. I'd like to see Tanenhaus write a follow-up book. On the one hand, movement conservatism seems more intellectually barren in 2017 then it did in 2009. The rise of the alt-right and the white nationalist factions of the movement seems to indicate that. On the other hand, the success of the Obama presidency masked an insurgent Right. How can it be dead when the Right is increasingly capturing the imagination of white working class voters, including union voters, in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, all three of which voted Democratic for years? Though perhaps this is misleading since Trump also seemed to push back most heavily on movement conservative orthodoxy: he was anti-free trade and pro-retirement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

[Den · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this short, but densely written, book may seem like wishful thinking in the hindsight of last month's election results. I'm always skeptical whenever someone declares a particular movement "dead'. In this case, Tanenhaus covers the history of the conservative movement from the New Deal Era to the present. Skimming through the decades, he describes how movement conservatism went from opposition to the liberalism to dominating the political discourse in the past thirty years. The "death" in the title of the book isn't so much a decline in voter popularity, as it is the movement's loss of its ideals and moral compass as it came to value power for its own sake. The evolution from Burke to Moynihan to Nixon to George W. Bush to Sarah Palin (or perhaps "devolution" is a better word) is potentially a fascinating historical narrative. There are a lot of insights into our current state as a polarized nation to be gleaned from such a study. Unfortunately, Tanenhaus' dry delivery makes reading even this short book a chore. Plus, while he dwells heavily on the sixties, he spends comparatively less time on the past twenty years.

It is really high time both the left and the right of this country get over the sixties. The universe did not begin and end with that decade. We need more insight into our current political difficulties and less dissection of events from nearly fifty years ago.

[Harsha Sekar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tanenhaus's slender book frequently favors platitudes over substance--he offers very little hard evidence, empirical or qualitative, for why conservatism has "died," but rather frequently and often annoyingly name drops various commentators and introduces arbitrary quotations from the likes of Gary Wills in a confusing attempt to advance his titular claim. I finished this book shortly after the 2008 election, and in hindsight, Tanenhaus's prognosis is of course way off, as movement conservatism resurged strongly with the rise of the tea party and the 2010 mid-term elections, which sent such conservatives to power in the House. Furthermore, Tanenhaus fails to consider that today's liberals have adopted and propounded the policy positions of the last generation's movement conservatives, like Barry Goldwater, a theme reinforced in studies like Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors or Rick Perstein's Nixonland. If anything, the current rhetoric of liberals is a testament to the endurance of the sharp rightward turn in American politics that first took place four decades ago and was solidified in the tenure of Ronald Reagan; since then, the kinds of big government liberals of the postwar era have virtually ceased to exist. However, this reality does not come across in the Death of Conservatism, making Tanenhaus's analysis all the more irrelevant.

It's worth noting that I've have heard very good things about Tanenhaus's biography of Whitaker Chambers.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd heard about this book from an NPR segment a while back and was quite interested in digging into the fundamental premise. The idea was quite interesting too. In practice though, the book felt too fractured and too detailed. It was a fairly lengthy list of names and influences throughout party history, and tracking who did what and why was far too complicated. The focus on this was meant to illustrate broader themes and trends I think, but in practice it just left me more lost in trying to pull them out.

Some of this might have been better if I'd used the physical form of the book rather than the audiobook, but when considering that the 250+ other audio books I've read basically never had that need, I tend to think this one standing out in that way indicates excessive complexity. The upside of the audio book is that the narrator has an AMAZING voice. As in, the booming basso on action movie trailers kind of voice; everything seems important and dire and was a true pleasure. That by turns added to the book and distracted from it, but my overall enjoyment was still higher for it.

In the end though, I got a few interesting tidbits from this book and some interesting afternoons of thoughtfulness but felt like I didn't really gain much from it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good overview of the history of the larger modern conservative "movements," including the neo-con orthodoxies that have gone so very wrong(hence the "Death"). Generally, the book is analytical, not written from the perspoective of a liberal peering down his nose. The book finishes with an articulate concern that the conservative orthodoxy movements have discredited themselves and removed a critical perspective providing credible dialog on social issues and political policies. Revitalizing the traditional conservative perspective that social insitutions arise over extended periods of time and are refined by a legitimate fit with needs of society and individuals. Change is not resisted but focused on small elements that are in need of change while preserving the rest, massive social re-engineering of is rarely successful. Shadia Drury's three part essay "Against Grand Narratives" provides some insights on his point. The first essay is on Modern liberalism, the second Communism, the third yet unpublished on Facism.

There is a brief dismissal of Jonah Goldberg and Amity Shlaes both of whom are pretty solid thinkers with insights that bear consideration.

[matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slim diatribe that took me an embarrassingly long time to get through, The Death of Conservatism makes the semi-convincing case that the abandonment of true Burkean conservative principles has left the New Right, with its hot-air demagoguery, estranged from the American populace. Though the Bill Owens and Doug Hoffman debacle speaks to that very point, Tanenhaus' skeletal outline asserting that revanchist Republicans ignoring the conservative electorate has led to the 'death' of its title is persuasive but also inconsequential. Since new school right populism has yet to suffer any substantial, sustained losses at the polls, the deceleration of death is arbitrary. A return to traditional conservative theory will only take shape when its necessary to win elections and frankly, I'm not convinced that the successes of one Democratic president rebukes the movement's continued forward motion. Are the current crop espousing a 'return to conservatism' completely unaware of the principles they claims to represent? Absolutely. But I didn't need this book to tell me that.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short book, which is actually mostly taken up recounting the rise of conservatism. But this is probably because it is harder for a reader today to understand why conservatism rose at all, than why it has fallen. Tanenhaus eventually says the conservative movement is what has died, and the reason is that America itself has become conservative. So, really, conservatism is somewhat ascendant, and it is merely the conservative movement that is dead.

I think the book gives much too little discussion to two powerful aspects of the conservative movement: religion and racism. Both are mentioned, but without nearly enough emphasis. Both are integral to the "southern strategy" most famously associated with Nixon. And they are largely all that is left to the movement today, which is why it is both impotent and disgusting.

[Maciek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few topics are as interesting to the political historian as the rise of the movement conservative in the U.S. Much like America's middle class, what we now call the conservatism in the U.S. was build artificially, not as a result of any natural historical process. Tanenhaus concentrates his narrative on the founding fathers of conservatism in America: Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. He then traces how the movement developed and how, to the chagrin of both founders, the movement changed beyond recognition in the late part of the 20th century. The sensationalist title should not divert the discerning reader's attention from one of the best historical accounts on American conservatism.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid critique of the decline of the conservative movement since the New Deal. Tannenhaus portrays the history of political and intellectual conservatives, dividing the movement into the purist "movement" camp and the "consensus" camp. He pushes for conservatism to stop being a government-destroying, revanchist movement and become a more reasonable opposition movement to liberalism. He looks at Burke and Disraeli, both conservatives who made key corrections and found consensus with more progressive figures. This book features a lot of illuminating points about conservatism, but its brevity leaves out certain key facets, such as conservatism's changing relationship to minority groups and women. 118 pages.