Let Gerson Be Gerson ; the Pluses and Minuses of 'Compassionate Conservatism'

Summary

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Jesus said in Luke 4:24, "Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown." And apparently not in his political party either. Such is the case of Michael Gerson and the reaction among some to his new book, "Heroic Conservatism." His struggles to move the Republican Party to embrace programmatic idealism are inspiring and needed. But his pleas to change the tone of the GOP have met resistance and criticism from his own side of the aisle.

After reading the book - and its critics' reviews - I believe the Republican Party and conservatives need to listen to both. Without ideas like his, the conservative movement contracts - reduced to a permanent minority of dour whiners saying no to hope. But idealism needs calibration - which I believe Mr. Gerson understands - lest real-world lions devour the naive projects of the good-hearted lambs. Idealism is political yeast that can lift a party to new heights, but it also requires pragmatic balancing. Mr. Gerson breathed rhetorical life into candidate George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" as a speechwriter during the 2000 presidential campaign and then served as a senior White House aide. He penned the July 1999 "Duty of Hope" speech summarizing the compassion project: "I bring a message to my own party," Mr. Bush said. "We must apply our conservative and free-market ideas to the job of helping real human beings - because any ideology, no matter how right in theory, is sterile and empty without that goal."

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Let Gerson Be Gerson ; the Pluses and Minuses of 'Compassionate Conservatism'

Some conservatives pounced on Mr. Bush following the speech - with vitriol still present eight years later. "Why is this man called a conservative?" wrote one recent co...

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