Monday evening, Hillary Clinton was the archetypical post-New Deal liberal. Ever confident of the power of the federal government to tinker, she intends to grow the economy out “from the center” by strategically investing in clean energy, new social welfare programs, making the rich pay their fair share, and helping small businesses. It is the same story Americans have heard from Democrats again and again, for generations.
Conservatives have what we believe is a thoughtful and persuasive rejoinder to the confidence of leftwing central planners, but alas this alternative point of view was not proffered at the debate. If ever you wanted proof that Donald Trump is not a conservative, Monday night offered it, in spades.
In Trump’s understanding, America is a total basket case. Our economy is in tatters, our cities are falling apart, even our airports are dumps—while the rest of the world takes advantage of us, in every way imaginable.
Trump’s answer: Only he can fix it. His vision of the presidency is an American strongman working on behalf of the little guy, who by implication cannot take care of himself. At one point Trump criticized Clinton for not mentioning the phrase “law and order.” But where, from Trump, was any talk about liberty, or the Constitution, or limited government? Nowhere, of course— because these are not values that are central to his way of thinking.
And what of Trump’s Peronist view of the presidency? The only two positions he enunciated with any clarity run contrary to nearly 80 years of Republican principles. For generations, GOP leaders have argued that America has a unique role in maintaining peace and prosperity in the world. Therefore, we should be generous, not miserly toward our friends, and we should promote mutual economic prosperity through free trade. Trump wants nothing to do with any of this. He sees the United States locked in a zero-sum game with every other country—where a dollar spent by us is a dollar that they don’t have to spend; where a job they gain is one job we necessarily lose.
This is the sort of thinking that Dwight Eisenhower banished from the Republican party in the 1950s, and that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all rejected in the firmest way possible. The lesson they each took, in their own way, from World War II, the Cold War, and the global War on Terror is that the United States has a responsibility to lead the world. We can’t be nickel-and-diming would-be allies. Instead we have to recognize that their prosperity can, in turn, generate prosperity for us—and security for everybody.
For generations, this has been the voice of mainstream conservatism. But on Monday, it was silent.
