Opinionator | The Conversation: What Would Edmund Burke Say?

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Brooks: Gail, as you know I have a policy of teaching at colleges I couldn't have gotten into, and as a result I find myself teaching at Yale.

Gail Collins: I didn't go to Yale either. But I spent the '70s living in New Haven. Does that count for anything?

David: I just got out of a class in which we discussed Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." As you may know, this book changed my life. I began reading it as a big lefty and I loathed Burke. But over the years, I came to see wisdom in it. Have there been big books like that for you, which had a pivotal effect on your thinking?

Gail: When I was in high school, I decided I needed to read the work of a great mind on the subject of politics. I picked Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Mandate for Change" because at the time I believed that all presidents were deep thinkers.

Carried that sucker around for six months. Read every page. There wasn't much philosophy, but I did learn that if we lost Vietnam we would forgo an important source of tin.

I believe this had a crippling effect on my ability to appreciate genuine political philosophy when it was thrust upon me in later life. And I want to say how impressed I am that after reading "Reflections on the Revolution in France" and not liking it, your response was to read it again.

David: Burke is famous for his belief in gradual change. He didn't believe in revolutionary change because he thought that society was too complicated to be planned through reason and remade according to that plan. My students were divided on this. Some saw wisdom in this modesty, pointing to failed efforts to remake societies, ranging from the war in Iraq to the Russian revolution. Others pointed out that most systems are constructed by those in power for those in power. If you don't have radical change, you just allow entrenched privilege to stay in power forever.

Did you ever go through a revolutionary phase? Are you still in one?

Gail: When I was in college and graduate school I hung around with a lot of people who believed that revolution was both necessary and inevitable. That was less because I agreed than because I felt they were much nicer than the folks who believed things were just peachy the way they were.

David: Burke is known as the founder of conservatism, but his thought sits oddly these days with the Republican Party and those who call themselves conservative. The party has become much more populist, supporting term limits and political outsiders over those who have been educated by experience. Most call for pretty radical change to the welfare state. It's the Democrats who fight to preserve the current structures of Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. It's the Democrats who have been running ads through this election campaign accusing their opponents of being a bunch of wild-eyed radicals. Are Democrats now the conservators of tradition?

Gail: The difference between the two parties is about empty places versus crowded places. You have heard me say this before – it's my long-standing theory, which takes the place of a political philosophy.

People who perceive the world as a crowded place believe that government has a very important role to play. They see it in action every day – enforcing the law, directing traffic, removing garbage and providing clean water. They're also likely to witness the inequality of the world and they want government to at least make the divisions less painful.

The current crop of Republicans, especially the Tea Party types, see the world as an empty place, where people can take care of themselves and government exists only to levy taxes and get in their way. Given the fact that the country is becoming increasingly crowded, I don't think you can define that as a message of change.

David: I do think Republicans are seen as the party of change this election. My sense is that in state after state, polls are swinging their way. The peculiarities of each candidate matter a bit less and the national tide is mattering a bit more. I'd now guess that the G.O.P. will pick up seven or eight Senate seats. It's just hard to be a Democrat in a red state or a Republican in a blue state. Do you have a different read on the trends?

Gail: I suspect you may be right about the outcome. The Democrats are in trouble in states where a large number of people either live in empty places or tell themselves they do. There's a lot of delusion in this game – we've all seen the guy who lives on Social Security and depends on Medicare for his visits to the doctor, yelling that he wants government off his back.

David: I'm not sure either party has an agenda.

Gail: You don't think announcing that terrorists are infecting themselves with Ebola and crossing the Mexican border is an agenda?

David: As you know I've been depressed by the vacuousness of the campaign.

Gail: Me too. Another one of my theories is that politics is at its worst when the country is almost evenly divided and each party thinks it can win if it just avoids saying anything.

David: But people do believe that things are pretty seriously off track, and so of course they are going to register some protest. Peter Wehner had a piece on the Commentary website that nicely sketched out how much the fundamentals favor the party out of power. It was called "America's Anxious Mood and What It Means for Republicans."

Wehner pointed to the drop in median household income, the fact that income inequality is nearing its highest levels in 100 years, the fact that the poverty rate has stood at 15 percent for three consecutive years (the first time that has happened since the mid-1960s), the fact that a record number of people are now on food stamps and the fact that only a quarter of people think the country is on the right track.

I sort of agree that Republican proposals on what to do about all this are less than, er, fully developed, and have not been fully explained. But isn't it an indictment of the Obama administration that it has made so little progress even on, say, reducing the poverty rate?

Gail: Well, Obama did run on the argument that our biggest problem was too much partisanship in Washington, and that he'd cure that by being less partisan. So I guess you could blame him for the fact that that definitely did not work.

I give Obama credit for the fact that we've gotten out of the recession, which never would have happened if the Republicans had their way. I guess I blame him for not actually being the kind of great communicator we needed to explain that the keys to reducing inequality lie in more government spending and higher taxes on the wealthy.

David: Wehner also points out that two-thirds of Americans think it is harder to reach the American dream, and three-quarters think it will be harder for their children and grandchildren to succeed. Of course they're going to favor the party out of power in such conditions.

Gail: Yes, and we may just keep switching parties without ever resolving anything.

David: All of this may be reason for some sort of radical change — maybe a Rand Paul type change or an Elizabeth Warren type change.

Gail: Ah, Rand Paul. What this country needs is a libertarian who believes the government has no right to control anything except women's reproductive systems.

David: If I was 25 I wonder if I'd be a radical libertarian or even a Marxist on the ground that a country that has been on the wrong track for so long needs a sharp kick in the pants.

Gail: This is possible. I'd say a 25-year-old who reads a lot of political philosophy is capable of anything.

David: But I'm sticking to my Burkean roots. Change should be steady, constant and slow. Society has structural problems, but they have to be reformed by working with existing materials, not sweeping them away in a vain hope for instant transformation. My only fear is that if I keep thinking this way I'll end up voting for Hillary Clinton, who will be the most conservative candidate from the party of the status quo.