Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.The only part I disagree with is where Wolfe writes that Alexander Hamilton was "perhaps America's greatest conservative." Just four paragraphs before, Wolfe approvingly paraphrased Louis Hartz's argument in the 1950s that the United States was born a liberal state. Since few others had as great a hand in forming the USA than Hamilton, the contradiction should be obvious. Was Hamilton somehow a great conservative who helped establish a liberal state? This confusion is sadly typical of most Americans today, who seem not to understand that Hamilton completely demolished and rejected the economic philosophy of Adam Smith. In fact, as I recently posted, Hamilton championed an economic policy that was most decidedly not conservative: active government intervention in the economy to promote innovation. Contrast this to the constant insistence of conservatives and Republicans that it is government regulation which is stifling innovation. As I am attempting to show in my HAWB series - How America Was Built - almost every single transformative technology in the history of the USA economy has been promoted and funded by government before that technology achieved commercial success.
Why Conservatives Can't Govern
With all the attention being given The Donald, I think it is worth
remembering that it doesn't really matter who it is, the plain fact is
that conservatives are unable to govern. Back in July 2006, Boston
College professor Alan Wolfe entertainingly explained why in The Washington Monthly: