A Likability Problem: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Death of Ideas

I’ve recently become involved with the Conservative Party of Canada at the riding level.  It took some effort but I’m now a board member of the Electoral District Association (EDA) for Vancouver-Kingsway.  During my efforts to connect with the local party, I spoke with the then President of the EDA.  We talked about many things, but he said one thing that stuck with me more than the rest; “we conservatives have a likeability problem.”  It failed to resonate with me immediately, but as I made my way home it occurred to me that he was both right and wrong.  

Likeability, at the personal level, is easily understood but at the political level, it’s more complex.  

Likeability can refer to the individual candidate, the party leader, or the party itself.  At the individual level “likeability” generally refers to how voters view the person in question.  Are they agreeable?  Friendly?  Charismatic?  In the lexicon of the early 2000s, would you want to have a beer with them?  This type of likeability is transitory in that it changes from person to person and is in many ways simple to deal with.  

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Losing candidates are, more often than not, replaced with new candidates whose likeability will be tested during the next campaign.  At the riding (or Congressional District) level a candidate’s chances are largely driven by the party’s platform and likeability, if it has any impact, can largely only hurt a candidate.  Likeability has a much greater impact on party leaders but is still, at best, on equal footing with the party’s platform and philosophy.  If conservatives have an issue with likeability at this level, it is a “simple” matter of finding the right candidate. 

The second type of “likeability” is much more difficult to address as it is the “likeability” of the movement or governing philosophy itself and it is here that Conservatives (and Republicans) run into trouble.  Small “c” conservatives like the Conservative Party and the Republican Party are, in principle, the parties of personal responsibility, individual freedom, and small government (this last one is more reputation than fact).  

“Personal responsibility” can be a difficult pill to swallow.  In the likeability battle, the message that you should work hard and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” places a distant second to the message that big business, history, society, etc. are to blame for your problems and all you need is for the mommy government to protect you and relieve you of any personal responsibility that you may have for anything that has gone wrong in your life.  For too many people, likeability is synonymous with “nice.”  

In a world where “nice” is the standard, the parties of the left (Liberals, NDP, and Democrats) hold a distinct advantage as they favor a continuous expansion of the “social safety net” by adding a litany of new services as well as expanding existing ones.  What is nicer than free stuff?  

Conservatives, in so much as they can be “nice,” usually do it in the form of tax cuts.  Tax cuts lack the optics of say free dental care or grocery rebate checks. While low taxes let taxpayers keep more of the money they’ve earned, they place the burden on the taxpayer to pay their own bills and budget their own expenses.  Tax cuts are also framed by the media as only benefiting the rich.  This “economic likeability,” for lack of a better term, is in some ways a philosophical battle regarding the purpose of government.  

While liberals see the government as a force for good and are consequently eager to spend taxpayer money on social engineering efforts, conservatives see government as a necessary evil and prefer to leave spending decisions to individuals.  Small government conservatives consequently agree with what Ronald Reagan said during his first inaugural address, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  If conservatives have a likeability problem, it is here, at the party and philosophical level.

When I say that the EDA president was both right and wrong, I mean that he was right that the conservatives’ philosophy of government is less likable than that of liberals, but that he was wrong that conservatives should be focused on addressing it.  

In a world where “nice” equals likable, the only way to close the gap would be to abandon the conservative philosophy and become another party of the left.  In the battle of hearts and minds, conservatives will almost always lose the battle for people’s hearts and so it falls to conservatives to focus on their minds.  

Winning the battle for people’s minds is hard work.  It requires convincing people that “nice” may be good in the short term but that it can be counterproductive and dangerous in the long term (ex: harm reduction drug policies).  It requires people to believe that short-term sacrifice may be necessary for long-term gain (ex. raising interest rates).  

It means reminding people that not only is life not fair, but that trying to make it fair may make matters worse (see the history of socialism).  Mostly though it means engaging in a battle of ideas.  The bad news is that, with a few exceptions, for the most part, conservatives seem hesitant to do so.  We need to change this.

But its not all bad news.  The good news is that voters are beginning to wake up to the fact that being “nice” is not a cure-all.  Identifying where voters have soured on progressive policies is the first step in identifying where conservative ideas may find traction.  An examination of recent polls and news stories indicates a number of areas where conservatives should focus, including: 

• Crime

• Drugs

• Homelessness

• Housing Prices 

• Immigration

• Inflation

These are all complex issues, and many are interconnected or overlap and consequently cannot be dealt with independently.  

Author’s Note: Look for the continuation of this policy analysis in two additional articles