“Conservatives have completely reversed themselves,” he said.
Edwards, who is also vice president of The Aspen Institute, was one member of a panel that included former New Jersey State Senate candidate Jeffrey Bell, history professor Sean Wilentz, politics professor Robert George and Claremont McKenna College government professor Andrew Busch.
The panel discussion took its title and topic from Edwards’ new book “Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost — and How It Can Find Its Way Back.”
“Conservatives have historically been the ones who have fought against concentrated power,” Edwards explained.
Bell noted that the conservative movement does include a variety of opinions, and that not all conservatives are alike. He added that some of the conservatives he has met were against the war in Iraq and even the Cold War.
He contended, however, that conservatives have not changed as completely as Edwards would have his readers believe. Bell noted that conservatives were united on issues such as the confirmations of Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito ’73 and opposition to the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.
Though Busch said that there were many aspects of the book that he “agreed with wholeheartedly,” he expressed reservations about some parts of it.
Busch questioned Edwards’ characterization of President Bush’s overuse of executive power, noting that former president Bill Clinton’s decision to intervene in Kosovo was made with less authorization than Bush’s declaration of war on Iraq.
“Bush did push executive powers too far, but I hesitate to view him [as] quite so unique as the book does,” Busch said.
Edwards conceded that Bush was not unique in pushing the limits of executive power. He noted, however, that Bush did not have to contend with conservative opposition to his actions.
“In the past, conservatives would oppose it when the presidents overreached,” he said. “Now that we’ve put party over principle, conservatives don’t [oppose it].”
Wilentz, the self-declared “liberal of the bunch,” applauded Edwards for writing a “brave” book that places “principle above partisanship.”

“There seems to be ... no real outrage in the Congress over ... the defiance of the separation of powers by the president,” Wilentz said. “I’m not looking for a great debate, just looking for someone to raise a peep about this.”
Robert Miller, a Princeton resident who attended the discussion, said that Edwards’ faulting of conservatism threw him a bit off guard.
“He seems to think partisanship is the Republicans’ fault, when I see it as being the Democrats’ fault,” Miller said.
Fritz Marston, another community member, said he felt the discussion would have been more insightful and illuminating if there had been fewer panelists and Edwards had been given more time to unpack his views.
The discussion was a part of the James Madison lecture series and was sponsored by the James Madison Program and the Wilson School.