I need to ponder a while. Maybe we all do.
Sorry to make this so personal, but 45 years ago, when I wasn’t even quite 12 years old, I mailed in a $1 contribution to Ronald Reagan’s presidential nomination campaign. In one way or another, I’ve never left the political-ideational battlefield since then, always in the conservative vineyards. One might think, therefore, that I would be full of advice today on where conservatism, the Republican Party, and the country should go from here.
One would think incorrectly.
I am faced with competing desires. I want to wish the best (for the sake of the country) to President Biden and to place hope in the palpable decency of the better angels of his nature. But I want to jump in with guns blazing against his immediate culture-war executive orders, against his radical vice president, and against the dichotomy between his soothingly centrist words and his agenda of identity politics, nun-crushing regulations, and radically open borders.
I am faced with competing desires. I want to say it’s time, Reagan-like, to create a conservative coalition by adding blue-collar workers to suburbanites and others, rather than, Trump-like, to attract the former by driving a wedge between them and the latter. But I want to reclaim principles for the conservative movement — free trade, smaller government, care for international alliances — that Donald Trump spent years trashing, while he lied to his “base” that those were the policies responsible for their despair.
I am faced with competing tactical and strategic predilections. I want Republicans to win back majorities in the House and Senate in 2022 in order to block any far-left policies that Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi haven’t already forced through. But I want dozens of the current Republicans out of office for the radical and dishonest nature of the Trumpism that some of them demonstrated. I want old-style Reagan conservatives to win an intraparty bloodbath (figuratively speaking), but I want no intraparty bloodbath to be waged.
I want revenge against both the Left and the worst of the Trumpists. I want to build bridges. I want purges. I want forgiveness. I want to fight the Biden-Harris team tooth and nail. I want to find common ground with it for the good of the country.
Fight, heal. Win, compromise. Punish, redeem.
And all of those conflicting impulses don’t even get into the more substantive questions about which policies and issues to push, when and how, for the best political results in service of the best public policy for the greatest number of people. We face a pandemic, massive debt, a frightening threat from a strengthening Chinese behemoth, and lots of other challenges, all while our social fabric frays at an alarming rate. Which challenges take precedence? Which imperatives are the most, yes, imperative of all?
Anyone who says the answers are easy and the right strategies and tactics are obvious is someone who is either a demagogue or a fool. The last four years have rubbed us raw. We need a breather. We need perspective.
That’s why it is so distressing to see Biden begin his term with controversial, ideological executive orders. A president who really wants unity would begin with actions that, yes, unify. A president who wants to represent even those who voted against him would not stick a pen in their eyes. Biden should find ways to give all of us, all Americans, a collective breather and a chance to regain perspective. If he doesn’t, we should resist. Of that, at least, I’m certain.
