In his editorial today David Brooks rings the death toll for conservatives:
It's clear that this election will mark the end of conservative dominance. This election is a period, not a comma in political history.
Whoo Hooo! That should be reason to celebrate. But then Brooks goes on to talk about what is next.
The people who will be most important are those who can most precisely identify the new era's defining problems. The first is the continuing rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It's clear the categories of the nation-state era -- rollback and containment -- are not working to reverse extremism, but what will? The second big problem is entitlement spending and the stultification of government.
The third challenge is the emergence of China and India -- seizing the opportunities afforded by those new workers, mitigating the pain associated with tougher competition and managing the fiscal imbalances. The fourth is the growing importance of cognitive skills and cultural capital, the need to surround people, especially children, with stable relationships if they are to flourish.
I usually don't agree with Brooks but I do believe he is right about the challenges we face both as a party and as a country. But, I would put all of the above in parenthesis. The BIGGEST threat we face in the future is not from Islamic fundamentalism, or growing populations in China or India, or in a resurgent Russian dictatorship. The biggest threat we face in this country is our dependence on OIL and those countries - the Middle East, China, India, and Russian - who need oil as much as we do and control it.
Until we recognize that OIL is what has gotten us to where we are today and we begin to make significant strides toward developing renewable energy sources and reducing our dependence on OIL, the war on terror and the war with the Middle East will merely be a specter of things to come.