It’s an old joke that “If the left didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any” — but it’s also a truism. One that too many conservative leaders have refused to learn to their peril. And serves them right.
Just ask Boris Johnson.
Does anyone really think that a Labour leader would have had their feet held to the fire in the same manner as Johnson? Well, okay, nobody should be deluded that Jeremy Corbyn’s idea of a wild party is anything other than reading Marx and drinking half-cold, milky tea with no sugar, so… bad example.
Alright, look across the Atlantic. As I wrote yesterday, if the media had had half the real dirt on the Trumps as is publicly available on the Bidens, it would have been headline news for his entire presidency. As it happened, lacking real dirt, they simply made it up.
But the double standard remains. The left hand waved away Clinton’s degeneracy in office while harping endlessly about Dubya’s youthful coke habit. In Australia, Scott Morrison was viciously roasted for being overseas during a crisis, while Anthony Albanese is fawned upon for spending more time out of the country than in it, during the worst crises in decades.
No, it’s not fair — but it’s real.
More importantly, the lack of propriety or basic morals on the left doesn’t excuse the leaders on the right carrying on like a bunch of drunken frat bros on Spring Break, either.
If conservative leaders want to be seen as such, they need to start acting like it.
The demise of Boris Johnson is a study in the tragedy of political leadership but, at this point in history, Johnson exemplifies the follies that have befallen conservatism in Western democracies and the problem of governing in a debased culture.
The first and greatest folly is the abandonment by conservatives of character, integrity and honesty.
Yes, you can argue that the left will still attack them anyway (their father’s abrasive persona aside, all evidence is that the Trumps could run rings around the Bidens when it comes to propriety and even basic manners). Conservatives are wasting their time trying to win over the left media.
But they’re not doing much to win over their own constituency, either.
Johnson fell not primarily because of his flawed policies; he fell because he failed the character test. Johnson wanted to be prime minister on his terms, cavalier about standards, mocking established norms in his addiction to our narcissistic culture. For all his entertaining idiosyncrasies Johnson was a tiresome product of celebrity indulgence, exceeded in politics only by Donald Trump.
Conservative voters don’t want to see a real-life Keeping Up With the Kardashians in the Oval Office or No. 10.
[Johnson] represented the collapse of conservative leadership with a moral foundation.
Western culture is fragmented; the more traditional morals disintegrate, the more the public craves leaders who possess a moral core.
Trump was, as one acquaintance said to me, “An asshole who gets things done”. That was true enough, but Trump couldn’t go on being an asshole forever. Sooner or later he should have grown into his role (which, in an administrative sense, he almost did: slowly getting to understand how to pull the levers of political power). Unfortunately, he never got the chance to really drain the Swamp, because he blew the purely PR aspect of leadership.
But Johnson didn’t just thumb his nose at the Establishment, he pissed on his people as well.
The Wall Street Journal said he campaigned from the right but governed from the centre-left. He governed in denial of conservative government principles – make choices, limit expectations, deliver consistency and reliability.
But perhaps Boris was right: maybe these governing virtues are dead in contemporary culture.
The Australian
I don’t think so. Much of the growing backlash against “rainbow” progressivism is driven by popular disgust at a degenerate hegemonic culture. Even a growing number of homosexuals are wrinkling their noses at the sight of naked men and drag queens parading in front of children at so-called “Pride”.
The Trump years were fun, euphoric: but, like dropping your pants in front of a Duchess, the joke quickly wears thin.
Maybe it’s time for conservative leaders to pull up their pants and start acting like grown-ups.
That doesn’t mean we all have to become cat’s-bum-mouthed Methodists, either. As Jim Goad writes, “A world of unrestrained debauchery is shallow and unpleasant indeed. But so is a world of unrestrained sanctimony.”
They just need to stop fighting the last war. They had their fun, now it’s time to sober up and get just a little bit serious.
