Recovering America - the restoration of the conservative movement in the US

National Review, April 12, 1993 by George F. Will

Bill Clinton is in the process of learning what Adlai Stevenson meant when he said America is a great and wonderful country in which any young person can grow up to be President--and that's just the risk you take. It serves the professional interests of the political class and the emotional needs of their journalistic echoes, who feel important in proportion to the importance of what they are writing about, to say quadrennially that the just completed election is the most important presidential election since God-knows-when. But frankly, this was the least important presidential election since at least the 1920s.

America, in large measure because of conservative achievements, is safer today than it has been in 217 years. Furthermore, the government today (this is the good side of the budget deficit) enjoys less latitude for action than at any time since the 1920s, or since it slipped the leash of the enumerated-powers doctrine of the Constitution. Finally, the problems most vexing to the most thoughtful Americans are problems singularly immune to the attentions of government in general and particularly government based in a capital on the fringe of a vast continent.

Losing an election is not the worst thing that can happen. Indeed, it is part of the dynamic of our politics. And 12 years in power is a very long time. Only four times in American history has a political party held power for longer than that. Also, the Republican Party fell victim last year to a paradox of politics, which is that the party in power is often punished for its successes. We tend to forget that the Republican Party was propelled into power 12 years ago by, above all else, inflation. As the currency lost its function as a store of value, inflation summed up the general sense that American life at the everyday transaction level was no longer functioning well. Furthermore, the Republican Party was held together by an anti-Soviet foreign policy. Inflation is gone, the Soviet Union is gone, and, not coincidentally, so are the Republicans. But they will find other things to do.

We shall be watching to see if another truth of politics holds. That is that great leaders--Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher spring to mind-often leave their most lasting impress on the opposition party. The Labour Party today is very different after its hammering by Mrs. Thatcher. We shall see if the Democrats also have been changed. The question is whether Bill Clinton is Henry of Navarre. You will remember that Henry twice converted to Catholicism in order to keep his crown, saying on one memorable occasion the words that are the slogan of every political class: "Paris is well worth a Mass." Today the question is: Was the White House well worth a pose of moderation? We shall see.

Dry Sterile Thunder

I don't think it is losing that depresses us. What has depressed us is that this loss was so sterile. In words that T.S. Eliot used, it was "dry sterile thunder without rain." There was no sense of an honorable banner borne to honorable defeat. William Jennings Bryan three times lost the Presidency. But before he was done, the Democratic Party had been largely transformed. The most honorable, the most fruitful defeat of modern times was suffered by the man for whom I cast my first vote for President, Barry Goldwater, in 1964.

Four years ago, in the inaugural address that George Bush gave, the seeds of trouble were apparent. He made mistake number one when he said our problem is that we have more will than wallet (indicating that he wished the government had more wallet). Mistake number two was not understanding that the great problem of politics always is an insufficiency of political will. Then he turned to George Mitchell, held out his hand, and said the people "didn't send us here to bicker." Actually, they send people here to Washington to fight and argue. That's why they send two parties here, because they differ. And when someone refers to political differences as "bickering," that person lacks the ballast of ideas that makes these things seem more than inconsequential bickerings.

The question is: Has the Republican Party learned a lesson? The lesson of 1992 was that ideas matter. They matter most of all for a political organization that will not define itself in terms of interests and therefore must define itself in terms of ideas. Forgetting that is a mistake we dare not make often. After Dorothy Parker's third, or perhaps fourth, suicide attempt (no one was counting at that point), a friend said, "Dorothy, if you keep this up, you are going to make yourself very sick."

Now, Mr. Clinton and his party seriously believe they can preside over another coming of Camelot. They misunderstand the great change in the American public in the last 32 years. An unsentimental coolness has taken over. The American people look upon the political class today the way that Bear Bryant looked upon football players---"Be good or be gone."

The great, stark political fact of the last 32 years is the crash of the prestige of government. Today the government reminds most Americans of the old Washington Senators, back when the slogan was "Washington-- first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." They were run by a man named Clark Griffith, who said one day, "The fans like home runs--and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans."