I remember as a kid hearing John, Robert, and Teddy Kennedy all using in speeches various paraphrases of these lines from a play by George Bernard Shaw: “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’ ”
The rhetorical question “Why not?” neatly fit the mood of 1960s liberalism. Even as a youth I was enough of a conservative to distrust it. If there were things that never were, I figured there was probably a reason for that. I also sensed that setting out this kind of utopian standard was dangerous to reasonable politics. So perhaps it’s a sign of hope triumphing over experience, of wishfulness replacing hard-headedness, that I find this quotation coming to mind today.
But what’s the alternative? Accepting that there is no escape from the political quandary in which we conservatives now find ourselves? Is that kind of resigned fatalism—what Tocqueville called a “sort of soft and idle terror that weakens and enervates hearts”—our fate? But isn’t this as false to the human experience, and especially to the American experience, as the other side of the same coin, a kind of wishful and deceptive utopianism?
Yes, it is true that there are some things that never were that really aren’t achievable, and that shouldn’t be pursued. But it’s also the case there are other things that don’t now exist that it’s not simply contrary to the nature of political reality to seek to achieve. One thinks of the founders of this republic, who in a hard-headed way did establish a successful regime that they claimed represented a “novus ordo seclorum”—a new order of things.
Are we incapable of achieving a new order of things in American politics? Are we stuck with the situation we face—a Republican party led by an irresponsible populist demagogue stoking grievances and dividing the country, and a Democratic party increasingly tending towards a progressivism indifferent to limited constitutional government at home and American leadership abroad?
Maybe. Political scientists will cite Duverger’s law, which shows that our electoral system tends strongly to two parties, to throw cold water on independent or third-party efforts. Everyone knows it’s been a half-century since a third-party or independent candidate won any electoral votes, and over a century since one made a real race of it at the presidential level. And historians will cite the experience of the last 50 years, in which primary opponents have failed to defeat sitting presidents, to throw cold water on the notion of depriving Trump of the GOP nomination in 2020. Pollsters will chime in to point out that Trump in fact has 80 percent or so approval among Republicans, and therefore will point out it’s likely the Republican party will remain Trump’s party.
But are we really fated to sit by and watch a Donald Trump-Elizabeth Warren presidential contest in 2020 take us to new political lows? Can’t we as a self-governing people have the wit and the nerve to avert this outcome? The best way to get from a depressing here and now to a more uplifting there in the future is unclear. The odds are against us. But why not try?
This “Why not?” is, after all, a practical goal. It doesn’t require some sort of transformation of Americans’ souls. It just requires some practical hard work informed by political imagination. It requires a dose of what was admirable about the old liberalism—a determination to change what can and should be changed, a conviction that we are in some important ways masters of our fate and captains of our destiny.
So why not either a restored Republican party or a new party of liberty—or perhaps “just” a one-off independent presidential candidate who can restore liberal constitutional democracy to a sound footing? Why not a revived conservatism—and also a vigorous and fresh new center? Why not, even, a liberalism that frees itself from progressivism and remembers that liberty comes first?
Isn’t this possible? Isn’t this a reasonable and achievable task to set ourselves for the next few years?
Why not?
William Kristol is editor at large of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
