A return to national greatness

Columnist George Will once said that you can tell who the real conservative is by asking, “Who would you have voted for in 1912?” (The conservative’s answer, by the way, is Taft.) Republicans failed to nominate Theodore Roosevelt, who subsequently launched the “bull moose” ticket and split the Republican vote, ceding the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.\nDespite ubiquitous calls for a new Reagan Revolution, the 40th president is simply not relevant to contemporary politics. Theodore Roosevelt is. Despite his desire to limit the scope of government, or maybe because of it, T.R. dramatically energized it in those necessary realms where only a robust national government could address its nation’s woes. He virtually engineered American activism abroad and led the nation to greatness.\nIf 1912 feels far-removed, that’s because it is. The confident greatness that once animated Americans has somehow been lost. And John McCain is perhaps the only one to restore it. Alas, his campaign seems to be in the worst kind of disrepair. But here is a radical Republican who, like Roosevelt, ran unsuccessfully against the conservative hierarchy, only to try again later, having been at least partially vindicated by events related to war and peace. \nAnd that brings us to McCain’s most vital virtue. Despite chinks in his maverick armor, McCain did engage in the greatest political heresy, which is to say, defending America’s position in Iraq, and the new strategy molded to take the fight against the enemies of that country and ours. \nThere are things to dislike about McCain. I can’t forgive his past dalliances with the media. And while I refuse to buy into the general slander that he “sold out” to the “religious right” by visiting Liberty University (I’ve read the excellent speech he delivered there), it was still folly for him to have embraced a man like Jerry Falwell who endeavored, not without some success, to level the “wall of separation” that ought to divide religion from politics. Nonetheless, McCain’s renowned thumos is still of immense value. \nIf he can muster the courage, he should suspend his campaign in order to devote his energies full time to bolstering the position of the president, the commanders and the troops, ahead of General David Petraeus’s report to Congress in September. This would be a great service to his country (not a first for McCain) that might also become serviceable to his campaign. Come November, if the newly minted counterinsurgency strategy, vitally assisted by the troop “surge,” proves a success, he would restart his campaign with the foreign policy establishment – and the other political candidates, Left and Right – solidly on the defensive.\nThen he might proclaim to the Republican convention of 2008, and to a country ready once more for greatness: “It would be a mistake to nominate me unless the country has in its mood something of the heroic – unless it feels not only devotion to ideals but the purpose measurably to realize those ideals in action.” He would be following an excellent precedent.