The conservative movement has come a long way in the last 20 years, but you'd never know it from listening to conservatives!
What a difference a couple of decades make! Compare 1997 to 1977, and you'll be amazed at how much has changed. The Evil Empire has collapsed. "Stagflation" is a distant memory. Competition and deregulation have driven down the costs of air travel and long-distance phone service. New Deal farm and welfare programs have been abolished. Crime in New York and other big cities has declined dramatically. Republicans now control both houses of Congress and a majority of state governorships.
One thing hasn't changed, however, and that's the defeatist attitude of many conservatives. In 1997, as in 1977, conservatives are "still depressed," says Adam Meyerson, editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review. Conservatives, he adds, are "still complaining about their leaders." And they are "still failing to build institutions as powerful as their ideas. The American conservative," Meyerson contends, "is seemingly dedicated to three principles: life, liberty, and the pursuit of unhappiness. Something there is about the conservative temperament that loves despair."
In the twentieth anniversary issue of Policy Review, Meyerson concedes that conservatism suffers from "a leadership crisis," but insists that "the crisis is not what most conservatives think it is. The central problem," he argues, "is not the lackluster quality of the party's presidential candidates. Nor is the central problem the timidity of the GOP congressional leadership in pushing for tax relief, spending cuts, and other conservative priorities. Instead," says Meyerson, "the crisis is the conservative movement's dysfunctional relationship with its elected political leaders."
Consider how GOP leaders performed with regard to the recent budget deal. "There was no consultation with key conservative activists in advance, no effort to find out which reforms conservative grassroots groups would mobilize for," Meyerson observes. "GOP leaders seemed to regard the conservative movement as an annoyance, an angry constituency to be mollified, not their strongest ally. The movement is also to blame," he continues. "Conservatives expect their elected leaders to do all their work for them, to mobilize the grass roots, to persuade Americans of the importance of conservative reforms."
Meyerson urges conservatives to stop hoping for another Ronald Reagan. Instead, they must seize the initiative themselves. "Conservatism today doesn't require national leaders with a dominating political presence or an eloquent media personality; what it needs most are movement-builders," says Meyerson, "hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of American citizens, reasserting their leadership."
He's got a point there, that Meyerson. Conservatives, of all people, should be able to resist the temptations of paternalism. We're independent, we stand on our own two feet, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps -- or so we claim. Yet, when it comes to politics, we keep looking for a champion. We want to declare victory after a single battle. The occasional setback overwhelms us. Where is the sense of duty we take so much pride in? Who's stopping us from asserting ourselves? What are we waiting for?
