Conservatism still works

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: February 1, 2008

The giddiness over Barack Obama's candidacy has stretched even into the Shenandoah Valley. Political reporter Bob Stuart gives us a slice of Obama mania today in a story about a local debate party (there's an oxymoron if ever there was one) staged for the Democratic senator, who's nipping at presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton's high heels.

With ice storms still glazing the region and the heat of the summer campaign still far off, the Republican race is finished. Though Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has yet to concede the obvious, Sen. John McCain, the irascible moderate from Arizona, is already in the presidential ring awaiting the arrival of a Democratic challenger. What Ross Perot might call that great sucking sound is the excitement being drained from the GOP in the wake of Rudolph Giuliani's Herculean belly flop.

Conservatives - and we suspect that a few Democrats are still willing to accept this label - are left without a horse in the race. A Clinton or Obama presidency surely would lead to widely expanded, activist government. The tough-talking McCain wears red but bleeds blue.

Liberals already are hailing the death of conservatism. Americans, they tell us, are seeking change, Obama's favorite term. On that, we agree. On the specifics of change, we differ.
This campaign is an indictment, not on conservatism but on the Bush presidency. Conservative commentator Peggy Noonan describes the Bush effect best: "George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues."

On each of the issues Noonan cites, Bush broke from core conservative principles, which call for prudent spending, limited government and a strong national defense bolstered by careful, well-calculated use of military force. Hillary's husband, President Clinton, similarly broke from party ideology. He tightened spending, reduced the deficit and ended welfare "as we know it."

The potential first husband vexed his political enemies by acting on their values as if he were acting on his own ideas. In the process, he became America's most popular Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. For Bush, the divergence from party ideology was part of a feeble and failed attempt at appeasement. For Clinton, it was a recognition of something that worked. Clinton's pragmatism and his hunger for the office won out over ideology almost every time.
Americans cannot be blamed for wanting change after eight years of wandering under a president who for all of his so-called plain talk never quite seemed to figure out who he was or wanted to be. We suggest the real change for which Americans yearn is for a return to a set of ideals that have served us well regardless of the party in power. It's called conservatism, and it still works.