Is Vance’s National Conservatism a Blood Brother of Federalism?

National conservativism and U. S. federalism are blood brothers. But brothers, ala Cain and Abel, may have their differences. Federalism moderates the pace of change, a perennial conservative disposition. But federalism may frustrate the sweeping agenda proposed by J. D. Vance’s national conservatism.    

The Republican nominee for Vice-President says he cares “about all those great ideas and that great history” but the “source of America’s greatness” is to be found in people who “know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.”

His acceptance speech evokes a tradition of national conservatism rooted in place, practice, and lived pasts. Edmund Burke, said to be the father of national conservatism, did not wish to impede just progress.  The British parliamentarian backed American patriots during the war of independence, and he tried to extend rights and liberties to Irish Catholics, but he condemned the horrific consequences of France’s attempt to substitute reason and revolutionary ideals for institutional continuity and traditional practice. He accepted the imperfections of Britan’s unwritten constitution as necessary components of the moderate change that keeps a nation connected to its past as well its future.  

 “To be a conservative,” said another British theorist, Michael Oakeshott, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, . . . the near to the distant…  present laughter to utopian bliss." Ideals—liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness-- are well and good in the abstract but when put into practice they become corrupted by self-interest. Rapid adoption of worthy reforms may have unanticipated consequences worse than the iniquities they were expected to rectify.    

The U. S. federal system, like national conservatism, retards the pace of change. By dividing sovereign power between a national government and the fifty states, the Constitution splits authority into multiple geographical jurisdictions, creating opportunities to protect THE the near and familiar. Lower tiers of government can be parochial, provincial, protectors of hide-bound survivals. Irregularity and contradiction hold sway. They impede national policies expected to shift the country to a better future.

States have been celebrated as laboratories of democracy, but, overall, a federal system resists the implementation of any one best way.  Visionary reformers may try out new ideas in some portion of the federal system, but they face multiple barriers when trying to bring ideas to scale.

In a federal system, policy-making is “path-dependent,” a favored phrase in contemporary academic jargon. The innovation does not begin with a clean slate on which reason can draw straight, bold lines. Past practices embedded in state and local centers of power introduce complications, confusions, and, at times, policy collapse.

In his acceptance speech, the Ohio Senator, like most politicians, makes no reference to federalism. It’s a boring topic. When a professor announces a lecture on federalism, class attendance plummets.  

Vance dwells instead on his home town of Middletown, Ohio, a cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian Mountains, and the “forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, [and] Pennsylvania” where he hopes to collect votes.   

Federalism was jazzed up by some clever politicians as part of their campaign to win votes for the U. S. constitution when it came up for ratification in 1788.  A series of newspaper columns, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, known today as the Federalist Papers, told readers the Constitution was designed to safeguard liberty from both external and internal danger. It created a strong national government to defend the country against threats from foreign powers; it created strong state governments to guard against tyranny. By dividing power into multiple jurisdictions, and splitting power among three branches within each, it guarded against the tyranny of the majority, the greatest risk of all.

These claims that federalism was designed to protect liberty appeal to reason, but conservatives like Oakeshott laugh. Liberty might have been a post hoc rationalization, but the Constitution divided power to protect the near, the dear, and the familiar to win the hearts of the voters asked to ratify the Constitution. Limited authority was ceded to a national government to guard against foreign adversaries, but the remainder was left to states voters trusted.

States inherited their authority from colonial governments that had governed for over a century under the loose hegemony of British monarchs.  The Anglicans of Virginia, Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, Quakers of Pennsylvania, Catholics of Maryland,  materialists in New York, and slave-holders across the South were not about to give up any more local control than essential.  

U. S. federalism is a byproduct of the near, the familiar, the laughing present, not a machine constructed according to a theoretical blueprint.  No other country has come close to matching this complicated, even weird system. Only about 25 of the 193 nations in the world have any form of federalism.   Russian Federation operates under Putin’s tight control. The Germany Federation corrals the taxing, spending, and regulatory capacities of its states. Canada and Switzerland come closest to the U. S. model, but the United States is unique in having 50 different states and thousands of local entities, each with their own set of elected officials and extensive capacities.  

Federalism will frustrate the next administration no matter which political faction captures control of the executive branch.  Since the Civil War and Reconstruction, the geography of the United States has never been so divided along political lines. No matter which party captures executive power this coming November, the new president will encounter opposition from towns, cemeteries, and mountains which have the constitutional tools needed to resist central control.  Should the Trump and Vance emerge victorious, they will be frustrated by a federalism that complicates, confuses, and delays their reform passion to control borders, restrict trade, and foster fossil fuel production. It is then that Vance will discover whether he is truly a national conservative.