Set aside the scowl

“Not sure why,” an acquaintance told me some years ago, “but I tend to like conservatism ever so much more than I like conservatives.” “And,” he added, “I also tend to like liberals a lot more than I like their liberalism.”

I’ll admit it took me a few minutes to sort all that out. When I did, I had to admit to myself: “He has a point.”

It’s an observation that takes no prisoners. Neither conservatives nor liberals can take total comfort while they wrestle with the implicit accusations so deftly lobbed in both directions.

After all, which reputation would you rather choose to live with: that of someone whose ideas are sound but who is always crotchety, or someone who is generally loved by all but whose ideas and values can’t stand the test of time?

There’s enough truth to the twin charges, though, that everyone can sense immediately what this friend was talking about. Not in every individual case, of course. But we all know intuitively that it would never work to reverse the issue—charging conservatives with being overly nice and liberals with being dour. Almost all of us sense that’s just not the way things really are.

But why? I’ve raised the question before in this space: Is there something deep in the nature of a conservative’s outlook that stamps it as ugly as well as true? Is there something endemic to liberalism that allows its dreamers almost always to come off as the nice guys, even while their ideas go bankrupt?

All this is not mere happenstance, nor merely the luck of the draw. The role of the conservative is by its very nature a more sober one, while the liberal’s demeanor is, almost by definition, allowed to be easygoing.

Most children learn early on, for example, which of their two parents is the tough-minded conservative and which is, relatively speaking, the anything-goes liberal. Most kids learn how to play one against the other. It’s just in the nature of things. Or, as WORLD editor Marvin Olasky pointed out to me once, it’s the difference between your parents and your favorite uncle. One has responsibility for you, while the other is just far enough away so he can afford to be a glad-hander.

Or, you could note in today’s political context, it’s the difference between the glib and always smiling Joe Biden and his typically stern and even severe predecessor in the vice president’s office, Dick Cheney. Which would provide the most upbeat company at a dinner party? But whose Middle East policies do you wish were in force and operative right now?

Some of this is admittedly media-induced veneer. I’ll always remember hearing the late Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., quoted widely in the press that if President Bill Clinton were to visit North Carolina, he should be sure to bring a bodyguard. What almost no reporter noted was the fact that Helms was grinning when he said it. The words, by themselves, fit the picture the media wanted to convey; the jovial spirit just didn’t.

Such handicaps notwithstanding, I’d still argue that it’s in the nature of conservatism to come off as a spoilsport. Conservatives are the preservers of the established order; liberals see themselves as adventurers in search of a new and better order. The task of the one, by its very nature, is perceived as a burden; the task of the other stirs excitement. And most of us would rather play offense than defense.

All that’s pretty hard to keep in mind when we’re in the middle of an incredibly consequential political campaign. “How,” some will almost certainly respond, “can you focus on trivial issues like this when great constitutional issues—and truth itself—are at stake?”

I do so precisely because so many of the important contests in this cycle are so hairbreadths close. Some could literally turn on the Ronald Reaganesque “likeability” of a candidate here or there. Let’s be grim when we’ve got to be grim. But let’s dare as well to set aside our dismal demeanors when such a scowl does nothing but obscure our foundational principles. Maybe it’s time to recognize and poke a little fun at the collapse of a few liberal strongholds.

If and when we learn a few of those lessons, I guarantee you that even a few conservatives will be fun people to be around.

Email jbelz@wng.org