Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti discusses American political thought and governance, along with the strategies and values that shape the parties. He’s the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the author of "The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism."
Transcript
Matthew Continetti:
From the perspective of the right, I think you would find many conservatives or populists, MAGA folks, within the Trump Coalition saying they are being good citizens. In fact, one of the obligations of a citizen is to protect their country. I think many people voted for Trump in 2024 because they thought that their country was on the verge of just slipping away.
Ted Roosevelt:
Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. My guest is Matthew Continetti, a leading intellectual historian of American conservatism. He's a columnist at the Free Press, a contributing editor at the National Review and the Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Today he's here to talk with me about his book "The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism." We talk about where American conservatism is today, as well as the political currents that led to the rise of President Trump, where Democrats fall short, and the role of money in politics, as well as the uncertain future of the GOP. It's a conversation full of sharp insights and frankly a bit of disagreement. So let's jump right into it.
I want to start with your book, The Right. You look back at the last hundred years of conservatism. One of the things you talk about is that there's a tension in conservatism between elite-driven ideology and grassroots populism, and it feels like today is very much a moment where we're feeling that tension within conservatism. So I'm wondering if you can set the stage for us in terms of where is the conservative party today in your eyes?
Matthew Continetti:
Well, the conservative party today is really an extension or partly absorbed in a different movement, a larger movement, the MAGA movement. And the Make America Great Again movement had some similarities with the conservative movement, but it was also different. It diverged from the conservative doctrine or conservative principles on some fundamental questions about the economy, about the role of the executive. And I also think that MAGA differed from the conservative movement in its view of expertise. The conservative movement that began really after the Second World War and continued on until the 2016 election, it had developed to the point where it believed that you needed experts in government, conservative experts, but that these experts in government could staff the government and use the federal government in ways that would advance conservative principles. MAGA emerges out of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis in 2008.
Its kind of emerges partly out of the Tea Party, but there are forces in MAGA who are not quite Tea Party. It's view of the Republican Party, the Republican establishment, conservative policy experts, was negative. It didn't trust experts of any stripes. It didn't believe in party establishments of any color. And so that movement, MAGA, has grown over the past decade, mainly because of Donald Trump, but also because of failures on the progressive side to the point where it's now the dominant force in the Republican party. So I would say that right now, American conservatism, the American right, the Republican Party is largely driven by that grassroots populist energy. And the more institutional, elite intellectual folks who have always been a part of the American right, they're no longer in control,
Ted Roosevelt:
Is a movement or a party that is rooted in, and this is my word, not yours, but sort of anti-intellectualism or opposition to intellectual elites: is that a durable movement?
Matthew Continetti:
Well, there's always a lot of anti-intellectualism in American history, and I think that anti-intellectualism can appear on either side of the political spectrum. I think when we're talking about the durability of a political movement, we have to ask how will that political movement institutionalize itself? Political movements do tend to form around or create the conditions through which a charismatic leader arises. Populism in the 21st century America has had similar leaders. For a time there was Sarah Palin around the time of the Tea Party and the financial crisis, the 2008 election. Palin receded Donald Trump came to the fore, and Donald Trump is this major historical figure in my view, somebody who will be remembered a century from now, right?
Ted Roosevelt:
One way or another.
Matthew Continetti:
And the question then is what happens to this movement when Donald Trump is no longer the president or Donald Trump is no longer around? Earlier populists found ways to institutionalize their movement, to embed themselves in government, whether that was through kind of the progressive movements relationship to the populist movement of the close of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. So can MAGA do the same thing? That's where I don't know the answer. I don't know. I think if there's any hope it would be that Donald Trump passes leadership of this movement to a figure like JD Vance who is able to appeal not just to MAGA populists, but also to more elite audiences because of his education, because of his demeanor.
Ted Roosevelt:
So much of the MAGA movement is built around the personality of Trump. And I wonder if you can talk about the core principles are the durable principles that somebody like JD Vance or whoever comes along after Trump can build a coalition around.
Matthew Continetti:
I think if we look at how Donald Trump speaks about what he's doing, I think we can discern some elements of a potential MAGA agenda beyond Trump. So Trump has called himself a nationalist. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, nationalism means someone who believes in secure borders, someone who believes in unfettered America. So a skeptical posture toward permanent alliances, definite hostility to international organizations and multilateral institutions. This type of nationalism, which can also edge into a patriotic view of kind of a national citizenship, a very positive or almost triumphalist view of American history. What else does Trump say? Trump lately has been calling himself common sense, and when he says he's common sense, what I think he's speaking to is kind of traditional social values. For Trump in 2025, common sense means that there are two biological sexes, there are differences between men and women, and biological men should not participate in women's sports.
I think when he says common sense, he talks about the importance of police, that police are not a threat, that actually police are a critical ingredient to having safe communities, right? So nationalism, common sense, and then I think the other part of this is the working class. So Trump talks about being the president of the working class and MAGA is considered a working class movement. We had a remarkable election in 2024 where the Republican party did well among poor—not the very poor, but poor and middle class, working class people. That's unlike the Republican party has done in decades. So those would be the three areas I would say that the MAGA is most interested in and most interested in perpetuating beyond Trump: nationalism, common sense traditionalism, and then the working class agenda.
Ted Roosevelt:
I want to dive into the nationalism side, and you said there was sort of an adjacent patriotism associated with the nationalism. One thing I don't hear as much about, or I'm curious about your thoughts on at least, is the idea of citizenship as a duty as it relates to patriotism. Is that something that you hear within the conservative movement or the, let's call it the MAGA movement? It seems to have faded as a concept.
Matthew Continetti:
I don't think citizenship has faded as in MAGA because it's very critical to understanding MAGA's position on immigration and immigration related issues.
Ted Roosevelt:
No question there. But in terms of citizenship as an obligation to your country.
Matthew Continetti:
So I think a lot depends in answering your question, how we define the obligations of citizenship. And I think that right and left define those obligations in quite different ways. And so for the right today, citizenship of course is something you were born into or you earn through participation in the legal migration process. And that citizenship confers on you certain rights that non-citizens do not possess. And that distinction is very important. Of course, citizenship also means obeyance of the law. I do think that some of Trump's pardons have undermined notions of good citizenship by commuting sentences, by releasing violent offenders. And from the perspective of the right, I think you would find many conservatives or populists, MAGA folks within the Trump coalition saying they are being good citizens. In fact, one of the obligations of a citizen is to protect their country. And I think many people voted for Trump in 2024 because they thought that their country was on the verge of just slipping away.
Ted Roosevelt:
Much of your book explores the balance or maybe even the tension between populism and principle. Do you think the populist movements today are enhancing or eroding civic life?
Matthew Continetti:
I think that there's something in the way that populists talk that does not help civic life. Populism, by its very nature not refined, can go for the jugular. It can be crude. It resembles the demos, it resembles the public, and it can embrace conspiracy theories. It can be tempted by the extreme. All of these things are harmful to our civic life. I would also say though condescension is very harmful to our civic life and the condescension of the left and the condescension of liberal elites has not helped civic life. I also believe that entitlement is not helpful for our civic life. The entitlement mentality actually does not identify by party. It's because Americans believe that they are entitled to these benefits and no changes to them, whether we're talking about Medicare or social security, and to a lesser extent Medicaid, that is endangering us. And of course we used to have one party defending those entitlement programs and another party advocating for changes, that was the Republican party about 10 years ago, and now we have no party advocating entitlement changes. So I'd say in addition to the more extreme forms of populism, we can also look at condescension and the entitlement mentality as degrading our civic life.
Ted Roosevelt:
Given how much movement there's been in the Republican party with MAGA, where do you see the Democratic party moving as it relates maybe just to working class people? You talked about that as a core principle of MAGA that has historically been a Democratic principle, is that they were there for the working party. Do they go in and kind of try to reaffirm that plank or do they move away and become free market, become globalists in response? Do you have a sense of how these dynamics work with each other?
Matthew Continetti:
There are two things going on. The first thing is how do political parties react to defeat?
And of course, as someone who's been on the right and covering DC now for more than two decades, I've seen the Republican party go through a lot of defeats and they respond in kind of different ways. The first wave is often to go to the extreme. When Obama wins in 2008, we have in 2009 the beginning of the Tea Party, we have Rush Limbaugh addressing the CPAC conference saying he wants Obama to fail. The party very quickly went to populism stop Obama. I think we're seeing something similar on the left right now where Trump wins huge gains among minority voters, Hispanic voters in particular, and then
Ted Roosevelt:
Everyone,
Matthew Continetti:
Yeah, big gains among young people. Where's the Democratic party right now? Well, right now it's Bernie Sanders and AOC getting the 20,000 person crowds in the cities. Right now it's Andrew Cuomo fighting off a socialist candidate for mayor of New York City in the Democratic primary. The Democratic base is definitely moving toward the more progressive slash socialist parts of the party.
Ted Roosevelt:
The three things that you brought up before, sort of the central tenets of MAGA: nationalism, common sense and working class. I would put one that's at least in my view, that sort of supersedes that, which is "the system's broken." I mean, that seemed to be the sort of fundamental message that Trump ran on in '16 and in '24. And the Democrats found themselves kind of opposed to that, like: "the system's working, we just need to make some tweaks to the system." But the last two decades have not worked well for most Americans. It seems to me like that message needs to really be adopted by Democrats. We need to make some real fundamental changes in terms of how this government works.
Matthew Continetti:
What I would say is there's absolutely, there's a sense among many people that the system has been broken. It's been two decades since more people have thought the country's on the right track than on the wrong track. The rules that James Carville scrawled on that whiteboard during the 1992 Clinton campaign still apply. What were the three rules? The three rules were: "it's the economy, stupid." Number two is "change, not more of the same." And number three is "don't forget healthcare." Okay? So think about Trump in 2016 and 2024. "It's the economy, stupid":Trump talked about jobs. And in particular, he talked about jobs in fields where most Americans work, right? Contractors, people in the service industries, people in extraction industries, energy. Jobs, that's what we talked about, right? "Change, not more of the same": well, of course, the two elections that Trump has won were change elections. The one election he's lost, 2020, that was a more of the same election. He was the incumbent. So he understands the power of "change, not more of the same." And then three, "don't forget healthcare." So as much as I lament this fact, Trump's putting social security and Medicare off the table has helped him in both of the elections he won in, and it probably even helped him in 2020 where he outperformed expectations despite losing. So I think any successful politician has to keep those three rules in mind.
Ted Roosevelt:
I have a slightly different view, a different framing of this, and that is my view is that the federal government has become less effective over the last few decades. It depends on what you're talking about by effective—they've become less effective for the average constituent, for the majority constituent, but in fact, they've become quite effective at serving moneyed interests. And that's because money in politics plays such a sizable role. And so what I struggle with the most right now is that we're living in a moment in time where the Trump administration has a cryptocurrency business. He's accepting planes from Qatar, he's negotiating real estate deals that are happening in countries where we are also simultaneously negotiating access to sensitive AI chips. And all of this seems to be, at least on the face of it, highly corrupt or highly conflicted, and yet most Americans feel like the country is moving in the right direction today. So I really struggle with that juxtaposition of the role money seems to be playing in politics today and the American's view of the federal government.
Matthew Continetti:
Yeah, that's an interesting point. You're right, it's something paradoxical. I think, whether there's more money in politics. It's an interesting question. My first book was called "The K Street Gang," and it was about kind of the Republican lobbying operation that predominated in the first years of the Bush presidency around 2001, 2005, and the scandals associated with it. One of my takeaways researching and writing that book was that the larger government grows, the more money becomes involved.
And I think you're right to point out it's not so much the money is determinative in elections. I mean, if that were the case, Michael Bloomberg would be our president. It's more of a case that money has a big role in the legislative process. Writing "The K Street Gang," and it came out in 2006, there's kind of a lack of policy solutions to this because of our individual rights under the constitution. Money is speech, freedom of speech. We have the right to petition the government. That's how the lobbying industry was created, and we have the right to assemble and try to form coalitions in order to get what we want out of the government. I think the way I would address this and cope with this problem is through my conservative philosophy, which is to say, let's limit government.
Let's reduce the influence government has in the economy. Let's reduce government's ability to pay special favors or to punish companies that aren't doing what the government wants. The more we can restrict the sphere of government, then the fewer opportunities moneyed interests have to influence the process. The other more conservative answer is to actually expand the number of interests. This is the argument of the famous Federalist 10. They wanted America to get rich. They wanted businesses to prosper, but they understood that all of the fights in our government would be over money. They would pit one commercial interest against another. And one of their solutions to that was, well, let's just have as many commercial interests as possible. So I think that's kind of the flip side of what I'm advocating in limiting government is when you limit government, that actually means you're going to have more actors outside of it. But if the government is small, if the administrative state is not so intertwined in the American economy, that also means you'll have less opportunities for mischief and for special deals.
Ted Roosevelt:
I see that point, but I guess I would push back on the premise that there is an inherent right for money to be in politics. And I understand that it's the Supreme Court and Citizens United sees it as free speech, but to me that doesn't seem necessarily true. That seems to be an opinion and nothing more than that. And that there are ways, certainly a constitutional amendment can change that, but to say that money in government is just going to have to be the way that it is, therefore government's going to run badly. Therefore the only solution is a small government. Seems like you're skipping over the first easy thing to change, which is to limit the amount of money that's going into politics.
Matthew Continetti:
Yeah. Well, I think what I'm skipping over is a different view of human nature than you might have. And so my reading of history and my reading of human nature says it's a problem—this is a problem with no solution. We just have to cope with it. These complicated questions, I approach them one from my more pessimistic and tragic view of the world and of human nature and then saying, well, if the problem is so complicated and any government intervention is going to favor another group, then we should just pursue kind of demand-side solutions where we reduce the demand for government interventions.
Ted Roosevelt:
And I remember reading "Showdown at Gucci Gulch" in the nineties. I mean, it's clear that money in politics has been an issue, but there are European campaign finance laws that limit the amount of money in politics. I mean, there are workable solutions to this problem.
Matthew Continetti:
I mean, one reform that I've always been sympathetic to is actually limiting the campaign. Many developed democracies just—they have restrictions on campaigns when you can engage in campaigning. I'm kind of open to that. I've always thought it was good. Whenever I hear the words "European solution," though, my eyebrows do become askew.
Ted Roosevelt:
I knew that would happen.
Matthew Continetti:
Unless we're talking about Denmark, which just raised its retirement age and which has a very restrictive immigration policy, I usually, I'm kind of hesitant to embrace German solutions in particular, European solutions more broadly. I think there's a reason America has really diverged from Europe and our economic trajectory and in I think the strength of our societies in the long run. And part of that is because we have this incredibly open political system. Now, it's also open to corruption. I'm not going to deny that, but it is open to people who just come out of nowhere and are able to challenge the establishment in ways that you don't see in Europe. And quite frankly, I think Europe is headed toward profound crises because their political establishments are so entrenched and so opposed to populism that they cannot adapt to the realities of politics in 2025 in the same way that the American system can.
Ted Roosevelt:
You mentioned the Federalist papers. The founding fathers did not envision as powerful a two-party system that we work in right now. It seems to me that some of the solutions to the problems that you have talked about can be ameliorated with a third party, a fourth party, a fifth party. How do you feel about the two party system? Do you feel like if we could have a third party, a fourth party, that would be a positive for the government and its functioning?
Matthew Continetti:
I think it's almost impossible. You're right. The founders did not anticipate the party system, in fact, didn't like it. They wanted Americans to be ruled by civic virtue. They knew, as Madison says, enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm, but they thought rotation in office, regular elections, we wouldn't have a party system. But of course, we got one extremely quickly. As soon as Jefferson resigns from Washington's cabinet, we have two parties and we've had two parties ever since. So I'm a big supporter of the two party system. What I think happens is that we...what would be third parties anywhere else become absorbed into the two party system. And I actually think that helps for political stability. We have third parties, we've had third party challengers like Ross Perot—like a certain Roosevelt—and what you find is that they'll make the splash and then the big parties, the Republicans and Democrats, will move to correct the problem that these third party individuals identified. And I think that's actually been a good thing.
Ted Roosevelt:
There is a difference that we've seen over the last few decades though that it used to be that the parties would sort of rank from conservative to moderate and from progressive to moderate, every member in the house, every member in the Senate. And there was a view that if you sort of changed your policy enough, whatever legislation was being proposed at the time is you could sort of chip off a few people from the other party to vote for your policy. That's really not true anymore. Now it's really party line voting. That seems to be as much the problem with the two party system as anything is that you're either died in the wall or Republican or died in the wall, a Democrat at this point. Is there anything you view that can change that that can allow for a little bit more flexibility for elected officials to vote with the other party without being primaried in their next election cycle?
Matthew Continetti:
Well, I think the major driver of the phenomenon you're describing is the political sectarianism, right? I mean, the Republican tribe, the Democratic tribe, red-blue divide—that has become hardened and it's become more pronounced over the last 20 years. There's no doubt about that. And so that means that there are these type of hard edges when it comes to votes. What I'll say is though there is still cooperation. The Supreme Court is representative in a weird way of the country. People forget: most Supreme Court decisions are nine oh or eight one, they're consensus decisions, but we focus on the cases that are six three or five four, where you see the divide. What are those decisions about? Those decisions are about values. Those decisions are about worldview. And what's happened is the two parties are now ideological parties in a way that they were not for much of American history. And those types of values divides—when it really comes down to the way you look at the world, your philosophy of life, what it means to be a human being, different views of human nature and what's possible?
There's really very little way to bridge that. And it is going to be a very slow process of an emergent consensus. I think that the leaders that are going to emerge over the next 10-15 years, they'll have a different attitude toward politics. But I think now we're getting to the point where the millennials, the Gen Xers, these generation Z, the Zoomers—who are more conservative than I am, which is pretty amazing to behold—we're going to have, I think, a less polarized politics, but we're going to have to wait a while.
Ted Roosevelt:
Matthew, I'm just getting warmed up in this conversation, but I have to be mindful of your time here. So let me ask you the closing question, which is, what is it to be a good citizen in your mind?
Matthew Continetti:
A good citizen obeys the law. That's the first thing. A good citizen is proud of his country, and I don't think there's any country we can be prouder of in the United States of America. A good citizen wants to contribute. Now, I think a lot of people, especially in Washington DC, when they hear the word "contribute," that means, well, they have to be government service, right? No. To be a good citizen, you can also just be a good participant in your institutions. You can be a good member of your family, an active participant in your community. So I think those would be the dimensions of good citizenship for me, following the law, pride in your country and your nation, and then also someone who's committed to the community.
Ted Roosevelt:
The pride in our country one is one that I feel very strongly about, and in doing this podcast just in the last few months, we've heard that come up. It didn't come up if you roll the clock back even a year ago. It's started to come back into the conversation much more often. And I'm pleased to see that there has been a pendulum shift back to this idea that, Hey, listen, the country's imperfect. We have some blots, we have some significant blots, but the ideals and aspiration of the country remain something to be very proud of.
Matthew Continetti:
I mean, we turned 250 years old next year. Celebrations have already started because the revolution began in 75, and I just think that's a wonderful moment for us as a country to cheer what we've accomplished.
Ted Roosevelt:
Matthew, thank you so much. I really appreciated this conversation. It was very, very good. Thank you.
Matthew Continetti:
Thank you.
Ted Roosevelt:
Matt, that was such a great conversation. I really appreciate your thoughts and the respectful back and forth we had on some really, I'd say, fundamental political ideas. Listeners, please pick up his latest book, "The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism." It's a very good, deep, insightful exploration of the conservative movement.
Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.
