Because so much happened in 2008 on such an epic scale, it is hard to know what it means.
Take the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States. Is this primarily the election of the first African American president? Or just the election of yet another Harvard Law School grad, the liberal elite taking care of business?
What about the epic collapse in the credit markets? Will this result in a ratchet upwards in political control of the economy? Or will it cause the politicians to lower the risks in the credit market by reducing the amount of subsidy for highly-leveraged borrowing?
What about the eruption of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber? Conservatives loved them and liberals hated them. What is that all about? Does it mean that the Republican Party has become a party of the yahoo white working class? Or does it mark the decisive turn of the party towards aspirational America?
What we all do in exciting times is project our hopes and fears upon the climactic events. Conservatives hope for a conservative renaissance; liberals hope for the birth of another FDR era of Democratic dominance. And both sides propose their standard solutions. Conservatives say we need tax cuts; liberals say we need stimulus spending. Nothing has changed since the Reagan revolution of 1981.
While we worry about our jobs and our 401ks, the real story will probably be told in India and China. Let’s assume that the US will struggle through the meltdown and emerge in a year into a decent economic rebound. But China and India may experience much more turmoil that we do in the US. If all goes well, they will emerge as economic, cultural, and political powerhouses. If things go wrong, and they might easily do so, then there will be untold misery for hundreds of millions, and doubtless wars of frightful ferocity.
But what about the threat of Islamic extremism? It’s a problem, but I regard it as a similar problem to the ruthless revolutionaries in the west in the tradition of Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Che. The Muslim extremists will be a problem, but they will fail just as the other ruthless revolutionaries failed. In the modern world, power is not enough. Power doesn’t issue from the barrel of a gun but from the wealth of the modern economy.
What about conservatives here in the United States? Shouldn’t we get to work and repair the damage of the Bush years? Exactly. The important thing to do is to reformulate conservatism into a sadder, wiser creed, and one that directs its appeal to the most important democraphic group in America: white women. Despite all we’ve heard over the past half-century, women care mainly about their marriages, their children, their health care, and their safety. Get right with women on that and you have got their support and deserve it.
That can’t be so hard, can it?
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