Why Pence Matters

But this year’s vice presidential debate may be notable in one respect. It reminded us of what a reasonably orthodox conservative, a relatively normal Republican, would have to say about the issues of the day. And what the conservative and Republican governor of Indiana had to say was reasonable, even at times compelling. Pence articulated with some success the outlines of a hawkish foreign policy; he criticized big government programs like Obamacare; he alluded to the need to reform entitlements; he defended the right to life. Much of what he said had little to do with positions Donald Trump has taken. But if Pence threw Trump under the bus, that’s Trump’s problem. And if Pence did a service to conservatism, that’s to everyone’s benefit.

A little over a century ago, the Italian intellectual Benedetto Croce wrote a book, once well-known, called What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel. We at The Weekly Standard don’t stay up late at night pondering matters of life and death in the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (Though this campaign has certainly reminded us of Marx’s famous riff: “Hegel says somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”)

But we do spend time trying to figure out what is living and what is dead in American conservatism. We’ve been inclined to the view that a fresh start will be needed after Election Day, that the task will be as much building anew as merely rebuilding. But Pence reminds us that there are already sturdy materials in the conservative toolbox to work with. American leadership in the world, limited and decentralized government at home, skepticism about progressive and liberationist claims—these staples of American conservatism remain true. More, they remain alive. Listening to Pence, we thought not only that any normal Republican or competent conservative would have defeated Hillary Clinton this year; we also were reminded that normal Republicanism and competent conservatism do provide building blocks for the future. And those blocks are not all or even mostly rotten or termite-infested.

But some are. This election cycle, and much else in recent years, points to some of the limitations and liabilities of modern conservatism. Here too, though, conservatism provides some guidance to its own renewal. It suggests that even as we take into account new facts and developments to deal with the world of 2017, we also should look back for guidance. It is in part thanks to the conservative recovery in the last three-quarters of a century of a tradition of liberal thought (if we may call it that), from Aristotle to Tocqueville, from the Federalist Papers to Hayek, from Burke to Strauss that we have resources aplenty.

So Mike Pence did something more important than outpoint Tim Kaine Tuesday night. He cheered us up. He showed us that the path ahead, while challenging, need not be overly discouraging. Hegel, if we may return briefly to him, famously wrote, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of dusk.” It may turn out that contemporary conservatism’s owl of Minerva could take flight only after the shock and degradation of the Donald Trump candidacy.

But of course we will not be guided in 2017 by an owl of Minerva. The world-historical task of fashioning a post-Trump conservatism that can save our country and the West will be in our hands.