Toothless foxes and hedgehogs with fangs
Aka Democrats and Republicans
Understanding international relations requires attention to domestic politics as well. National interests are constantly redefined through the domestic political process. Interests are not cast in concrete once and for all, based for example on size or geography. And a policy idea like “American First,” in vogue again after 80-some years, can have simultaneously domestic and international dimensions.
The November 5 US election was part of a trend visible to varying degrees in many countries. A sort of “Populist International” is already evident, and courtship of the US president-elect by those, e.g. Viktor Orbán, who see him as an ideological cousin will only intensify.
It Is worth reflecting on the reasons for populist success, and the great British historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin can offer some useful insights. Berlin’s most widely read work is his obscurely titled 1953 reflection on Tolstoy, The Hedgehog and the Fox. Berlin borrowed from the earliest well known Greek lyric poet Archilocus, active around 650 BCE, who said: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin then divided great writers into hedgehogs like Dostoyevsky and foxes like Shakespeare. Tolstoy’s philosophical bent, in Berlin’s view, was a sign the Russian novelist wanted to be a hedgehog, though he was actually a fox by nature.
Separating foxes from hedgehogs no longer seems fashionable. But the metaphor is still useful. Berlin thought himself a fox, but his description of foxes was not very flattering. While sharp-eyed, they could suffer from scattered and diffuse thinking, pursuing often contradictory ends, seizing on a vast variety of experiences and things with no real unifying perspective. The human hedgehogs, on the other hand “relate everything to a single central vision . . . a single universal organizing principle” (The Hedgehog and the Fox, pp. 24-25) which gives significance to their actions and words.
The hedgehog/fox metaphor is applicable to politics as well as literature. As Berlin’s biographer Michael Ignatieff pointed out, for example, Marx was “the most implacable hedgehog of them all” (The Hedgehog and the Fox, p. 14). On the contemporary US political scene, it is tempting to think of Republican hedgehogs and Democratic foxes. Eight years ago, in fact, Newt Gingrich, hardly my favorite political philosopher, labelled Hillary Clinton a fox and Donald Trump a hedgehog. If you are seeking erudite and richly documented position papers on a vast range of issues, look to the Democrats. If you want a single big idea that manages to convince a disparate mass of electors, look to the other side.
For all their aggressive verbiage during the campaign, the Republicans’ core concept, like that of actual hedgehogs, was a defensive one. They wrapped themselves around a certain idea of America, with spines extended to provide protection against threats from any direction. Little matter that said idea of America was arguably antiquated, more 1950s and 60s than 2020s. Indeed, protection against a series of long-term societal trends and discomforting ideas was part of the point. It was an effective approach, clearly attractive even to some people whom one might have expected to feel unwelcome under that particular protective shield.
Most of us now have little direct, personal experience with foxes, but frustrated domestic canines trying to get at something or get somewhere are a common sight. In 2024, despite the abbreviated campaign, frustrated Democratic foxes tried multiple approaches to break though Republican defenses, without success. To her credit, the Vice President underlined, credibly, her intention to be a president for all Americans, and was trying to take some distance from extreme and unrepresentative positions with which the Democratic party was associated.
But the foxes could not shake the perception that their propositions, even if one accepted them as foxily clever and well documented, were nonetheless always aimed at the concerns and interests of very specific sectors of the electorate. When asked to articulate the party’s program, Democratic spokespersons invariably began with a group-by-group list of what in fact mattered and what they were proposing. But one can strongly support, for example, protecting abortion rights or ensuring protection of certain targeted groups, and still lament the absence of a larger, unifying core idea.
This is not an argument in favor of single-minded “monism,” Berlin’s term for the antithesis of the pluralism he so fervently advocated. Berlin rightly saw monism as being a central characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian ways of thinking. But effective, big-picture narratives are not automatically antithetical to liberalism. FDR is a useful example, as was Ronald Reagan, who, for all his conservatism, offered a broad, inclusive vision, a willingness to learn, and a stout defense of democracy.
Returning to Republican hedgehogs and Democratic foxes, one should not take the metaphor too far. In nature, foxes are effective predators, while hedgehogs, despite their stout defenses, are prey. In the nursery rhyme by Clemente Bondi (1742 – 1821), the Italian poet and translator presents us a very silver-tongued fox, who convinces a hedgehog it can safely doff its spines to sleep comfortably in a nice warm bed. (It doesn’t end well for the hedgehog.) Democratic foxes in 2024 had no comparable success. In addition, they scarcely seemed predatory, if anything rather toothless.
Republican hedgehogs – perhaps readers of Hobbes -- seemed more mindful of the harsh, eat or be eaten political state of nature. In addition to their defensive gear, actual hedgehogs have sharp little teeth, including canines (i.e. fangs). Republican hedgehogs seem quite comfortable with their metaphorical fangs.
Democratic foxes should not give up on knowing many things. But, like the hedgehogs, they need to know one big thing and put that up front. The foxes also should, without embarrassment, get in touch with their inner predator, eschewing passive aggression, and flashing their own fangs a bit.