This just in: Ronald Reagan is dead and he's not coming back. Now, can
conservatives please move on?
Reagan always spoke about the future and its possibilities. Today's
conservatives, however, can't seem to break with the past and the nostalgia
for the Reagan years. Even in his letter to the American people in 1994 in
which he revealed he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Reagan wrote of his
"eternal optimism" for the country's future. Too many modern conservatives
seem embedded in a concrete slab of pessimism, preferring to go over a
bridge and drown rather than "compromise" their "principles." If you can't
get elected, your principles can be talked about on the lecture circuit, but
are unlikely to be adopted in Washington.
John McCain, some say, is not a true conservative. Was Reagan? Reagan
campaigned as a tax cutter. He cut taxes, but he also raised them. He
promised conservative judges and spoke of his opposition to abortion, yet
named two justices to the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony
Kennedy) who voted to uphold Roe v. Wade. Against the advice of some, Reagan
deployed Marines to Lebanon and saw them murdered by a homicide bomber.
Reagan engaged in an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. As president, Reagan
seldom went to church, unlike his evangelical base. If conservatives knew in
advance these things about Reagan, would they have voted for him in such
numbers?
Contemporary conservatism has mostly been about saying "no" to the liberal
agenda. Suppose conservatives instead begin to circumvent liberals by
applying better ideas to achieve ends liberals and conservatives claim to
seek?
This is the point of David Frum's new book, "Comeback: Conservatism That Can
Win Again." Frum, a former speechwriter in this Bush administration,
believes the issues that brought Republicans to power in the 1980s and '90s
are different from the concerns of most Americans today. That hasn't stopped
Republicans and conservatives from resurrecting what worked before: taxes,
guns and promises to restore "traditional values," things that are beyond
the power of politicians. As we've seen in both parties, politicians have
trouble imposing morality on themselves. Why do we suppose them capable of
imposing such "values" (don't they really mean "virtues"?) on the citizenry?