Bill Kristol took the challenge and for a year was the conservative voice of journalism's gold standard, The New York Times. Many columns ensued. Many Challenges took place. In they end, all anyone will remember is that he took a beautiful rug that tied the room together and pissed on it with his carelessness and errors.
Into that Cesspool of Contamination stepped Ross Douthat of the Atlantic. A conservative's conservative. His first column served up a nice big ole bag of honesty, and boy did it taste good.
Cheney for President. Here's a sample:
As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.
Well Written First Column,
Ross, is absolutely right. What the Republican Party needs is an opportunity to hit bottom. Dick Cheney running for The Presidency would have allowed the Party to see that its not the candidate, its the ideas, and more importantly, its the present application of those ideas that the American People have come to reject!
All too often, modern day conservatives look at all of the problems we're faced with and think to themselves "WWRD", What would Reagan Do? Then their inner conscience shouts back "Cut Taxes!" As if cutting taxes instantly gives anyone the ability to feed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread.
Conservative presidents before Bush 2.0 (Namely Reagan, and Bush 1.0) were more pragmatic about what the problems facing our country and what solutions were needed. One of Reagan's most quoted lines is "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Many modern day conservatives leave out a very important portion of the quote which is "IN THIS PRESENT CRISIS, government..." What most conservatives choose to ignore is when Reagan knew he had gone too far with tax cuts, he raised them to keep the country running at a sustainable level and to fight deficits. (Reagan's Tax increases were actually larger than Clinton's as a share of the G.D.P. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/opinion/08KRUG.html) H.W. Bush, also a good conservative, looked at the landscape of America after his victory in Desert Storm and realized the responsible thing to do at that moment was to raise taxes to pay for the war even though he had pledged that he wouldn't do it. He put the needs of the country before the teachings of ideology and suffered a defeat that lead to America's Prosperity (The Clinton Years).
What this new breed of conservatism has wrought is a group of people who apply the same solutions to every single problem because they saw it work once. It's like a guy who watches NASCAR and thinks the solution to every car problem is changing the tires. It doesn't matter that the problem is the battery, or the fan belt, or even that the engine is on fire. He saw Dale Earnhardt get a fresh set of tires and win at Daytona, so that's what he's gonna do. In 1980 American entrepreneurship was too constricted by some government workplace regulation. Taking down some of OSHA standards lowered the financial barrier to entry for many start up businesses and the tax cuts helped middle income earners on the brink of success build small businesses to fuel growth (though, the deregulation of the financial industry, led to the S&L scandals that almost sunk the economy).
The true conservatism that Goldwater, Reagan, and Bush 1.0, stood for was more of a strong guideline instead of a principle based edict. They wanted a Strong Defense, Privatization of Services, Less Intrusive government, and lower taxes, but they understood if it wasn't working for the people then they needed to toss the guideline and go with their populace. Ultimately, that's what policy is for, to serve the people.
Dick Cheney running for President would have been exquisite for both the Democratic Party and for the nation as a whole. Obama would have won with a wide enough victory to make Reagan's 1984 win look like a Celtics versus Bulls Buzzer Beater. The nation would have benefited because the reflexive neoconservative ideological bent would have been trounced once and for all with no excuses. There would be no call of "Squish" or "Rino" because Dick Cheney is the Incredible Hulk of Conservatism. Dick Cheney is so conservative, he might object to being the Incredible Hulk, because the Hulk is green, and green = Liberalism. There isn't so much a moderate bone in Dick's body, let alone a green one.
The conservatives would have asked themselves essential questions, Like, as a public servant, are my policies serving the public? Am I helping people or at least providing ways for them to be helped? Why doesn't America like me?
This would lead them to a more productive place. A place where we can have substantive debates on health care (where we try to balance the ingenuity of private medical practice with the coverage base of single payer) on defense (big weapons systems vs highly specialized troops) and education (Vouchers & Charters vs. more public education investment and teacher reward). Instead what we have is more denial, more name calling, more Palin, more irrelevance. Maybe after Caribou Cheney runs in 2012 and is trounced the rest of the Conservatives will follow Ross and have their real moment of truth. Maybe they'll discover that a government that is drowned in the bathtub will rot and stink up the whole house.