We Win
the weekly Standard We Win The era of big government is over." With these words, in his State of the Union address, Bill Clinton announced the surrender of modern liberalism and conceded victory...
...its historic role has been to defend it, to manage it, to extend it, to try to perfect it...
...And, as Michael Kinsley once pointed out, insincere flattery is the most sincere form of flattery, since it testifies even more convincingly to the power of the person or idea being flattered...
...But rhetoric matters...
...To ride the new tide of conservatism, it is necessary to keep the boat afloat and steer it through the rapids...
...The task of conservative governance requires intellectual boldness...
...American government is, after all, as big as it's ever been...
...A year ago, after the 1994 election, Clinton was willing to acknowledge that we had to "change the way our government works to fit a different time...
...This will require a new suppleness in conservative political strategy and a new evenness in conservative temperament-it will even mean, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page (!) allowed this week, occasionally realizing that there is a "time for patience...
...He is infinitely willing to stoop to conquer, and conquer he may- though the odds still look very good to us that he will be a one-term president...
...For now, conservatives should remember: Magnanimity in victory-but not too much...
...With these words, in his State of the Union address, Bill Clinton announced the surrender of modern liberalism and conceded victory to conservatives...
...Clinton is cheerfully deserting liberalism's sinking ship...
...To sink the boat of liberalism, it was necessary to fire away...
...he is the Democratic party's Gorbachev...
...Now, after three years in office, a Democratic president proclaims the end of the cause to which his party has heretofore been dedicated...
...But the Democratic party is the party of big government...
...The Republican Congress has been stymied in most of its efforts to make it appreciably smaller...
...And that task demands a different approach than did the previous conservative work of resistance and opposition...
...Okay, so we haven't won yet...
...It's possible, of course, that Clinton's gambit will pay off in the fall campaign...
...One phrase that won't make it, also spoken in the State of the Union, is "the Age of Possibility...
...The era of big government isn't quite over...
...We win...
...But these are tasks for the weeks, months, and years ahead...
...But the Age of Possibility...
...Fifty years from now, "The era of big government is over" will be (along with his pre-presidential "but I didn't inhale") the only quotation from Bill Clinton memorialized in history textbooks...
...When he addressed Congress three years ago, he said, "I believe government must do more...
...It took Gorbachev three years in office fundamentally to subvert his party's claim to rule...
...In any case, this will not be the Age of Clinton...
...And he announced this desertion with what may be the only memorable sentence of his presidency...
...That may mean slowing down occasionally, tacking to the center at times, and reassuring some of the more reluctant passengers that the boat is in good hands...
...Clinton has had three years...
...And Bill Clinton's concession is in any case rhetorical and insincere...
...Thinking through the path to a relimited government and a re-moralized society will be more challenging than elaborating the critique of the welfare state...
...Then came the Age of Progress...
...Then the Age of Aquarius...
...He didn't plan to be...
...That is the conservative opportunity...
...At the same time, the fact of conservative governance requires a greater understanding of the day-today necessities of practical accommodation and political prudence...
...The road to serfdom is easier to identify than the road to liberty...
...Two years ago, he threatened to veto any health-care legislation that fell short of creating a huge new government entitlement...
...The intellectual habits of opposition-excessive pleasure in a "gotcha" approach to the left, a corresponding susceptibility to infatuation with silver bullets of the right-will have to give way to a more serious but also more ambitious conservative intellectual enterprise...
...The Democrats were once proud of this role...
...Not even the Age of Probability...
...But with one term or two, Clinton has no serious role in shaping the new era...
...It would mean little if a Republican president proclaimed the end of the big-government era...
...Once upon a time, liberals were confident that they were ushering in an Age of Enlightenment...
...Now the force of the tidal wave of 1994 has become fully apparent...
...It created big government...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 20
