The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America

I’m not really a Conservative, but I do a fair amount of conservative reading. With that perspective, this is a well-written and thoughtful book.

Its basic premise is this: Liberal policies have hurt people, especially the poor. Disadvantaged Americans are no better off than when LBJ’s “War on Poverty” started in the 60s. But Conservatives have been maligned as the party that doesn’t care about people, only money and wars.

This book presents a case that (1) Conservative policies help poor people more than liberal policies, and (2) Conservatives need to change the conversation to prove this.

I don’t know whether any of that is true, but the book makes a decent case for it.

I was going to rate the book lower because it gets very repetitive. In the early chapters, the author (who is the president of the American Enterprise Institute) goes on and on with statistic to prove his point about Liberal policy failures, and you can’t see how you’re ever going to get out of it.

However, the book turns in the final chapter. The author presents a seven-step plan for changing the conversation in favor of Conservative policies, and I enjoyed that. It involves quite a bit of human psychology, and thinking in ways that people who get their hackles up during political debates might never have considered.

Good book. Worth reading.