The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (Hoover Institution Press Publication) - Softcover

Lloyd, Gordon; Davenport, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817916857 ISBN 13: 9780817916855

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press, 2014

Synopsis

Providing an often-overlooked historical perspective, Gordon Lloyd and David Davenport show how the New Deal of the 1930s established the framework for today’s U.S. domestic policy and the ongoing debate between progressives and conservatives. They examine the pivotal issues of the dispute, laying out the progressive-conservative arguments between Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s and illustrating how those issues remain current in public policy today. The authors detail how Hoover, alarmed by the excesses of the New Deal, pointed to the ideas that would constitute modern U.S. conservatism and how three pillars—liberty, limited government, and constitutionalism—formed his case against the New Deal and, in turn, became the underlying philosophy of conservatism today. Illustrating how the debates between Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were conducted much like the campaign rhetoric of liberals and conservatives in 2012, Lloyd and Davenport assert that conservatives must, to be a viable part of the national conversation, “go back to come back”—because our history contains signposts for the way forward.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

It is widely claimed that modern American conservatism emerged in the 1950s with the writings of William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk and, perhaps most important, the founding of the National Review in 1955. The ideas they advanced did indeed launch an intellectual movement that soon advanced to the political arena. But the search for the birth of modern American conservatism must reach back further than the 1950s. Beginning with the presidential campaign of 1932, but especially after the New Deal began to be implemented in1933, the writings and speeches of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover framed the progressive-conservative debate that has dominated the US political and policy landscape for the past eighty years and is still going strong.

In The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism, Gordon Lloyd and David Davenport offer a unique historical perspective on the progressive-conservative discussion. They go back again to the 1930s but with the express purpose of coming back to public policy today, seeking to recapture a debate between Roosevelt and Hoover that has not only been lost but that is so timely today. In the name of taming an economic crisis, President Roosevelt undertook emergency measures to reshape the federal government. But that emergency response never went away and, instead, became what we call today “the new normal,” a newly reshaped welfare state from which we continue to work and to which we continue to add. In a very real sense, the New Deal managed to reinvent and reshape the federal government in ways that still form the basic shape of US domestic policy today.

The authors examine the three pivotal issues that make up the essence of the progressive-conservative debate between Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s: liberty versus equality, limited government versus expansive government, and constitutional conservatism versus liberal reinterpretation. They go on to illustrate how those issues remain current in public policy today. Lloyd and Davenport conclude that conservatives must, to be a viable part of the national conversation, “go back to come back”—because our history contains signposts for the way forward.

From the Back Cover:

Can the future of conservatism be found in the past?

In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, Republicans are in a near frenzy to explain what went wrong and what conservatives must do to be a viable part of the national conversation. The answer, say Gordon Lloyd and David Davenport, is “go back to come back”—because our history contains signposts for the way forward. In this book they show how the New Deal of the 1930s established the framework for today’s US domestic policy and the ongoing debate between progressives and conservatives, revealing how the debates between Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were much like the campaign rhetoric of liberals and conservatives in 2012.

The authors detail how Hoover, alarmed by the excesses of the New Deal, pointed to the ideas that would constitute modern American conservatism. Three pillars—liberty, limited government and constitutionalism—formed the core of Herbert Hoover’s case against the New Deal and, in turn, became the underlying philosophy of conservatism today. Lloyd and Davenport show that American conservatism is not dead or dying—but advise that conservatives must worry less about electoral strategies and politics and dig deeper into core principles and policy.

Gordon Lloyd is a professor of public policy at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He also serves on the National Advisory Council for the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

David Davenport is counselor to the director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He previously served as president of Pepperdine University, where he was also a professor of law and public policy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0817916857
• ISBN 13: 9780817916855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120