Back in 1987, when he was campaigning for President, one of George H. W. Bush’s advisers suggested that he back off from spouting minutiae to the electorate and spend some time focusing on the big picture, So that he could better sell himself to Americans.  According to contemporaneous reports, Bush, Sr., was not impressed:

“Oh,” said Bush in clear exasperation, “the vision thing.”

Bush went on to win the 1988 election, despite his failure to articulate a vision for the American people.  He didn’t have to engage in inept abstract fumbling to endear himself to voters.  What he understood, consciously or unconsciously, was that Reagan had articulated “the vision thing” so beautifully that it covered, not only Reagan’s own administration, but Bush’s election efforts as well.

It helped, too, that Reagan passed on to his Vice President a roaring economy and a country that still maintained at least the gloss of an American identity.  Back in those days, even though I was only just out of law school (meaning I’d spent the previous 19 years in academia), I’d never heard of political correctness, community activists, multiculturalism or Howard Zinn.  I called myself a Democrat and had never heard of a Progressive.  Although these ideas were making serious inroads into American education in the 1980s, those of us who cast our votes in 1988 were still relatively untouched by the revamping of America’s self-image.  Nobody needed to tell us who we were, because (probably thanks to Reagan) we already knew.

Things are quite different as we head toward the 2012 election.  America is in a deep economic morass, college students and Communists are rioting in the streets, Europe’s economy is collapsing, China’s economy is shrinking, and the Middle East is a more-seething-than-usual cauldron of antisemitism and anti-Western hatred.  Times such as this would seem to cry out for a strong managerial hand.  It ought to be Mitt Romney’s moment.  After all, he radiates wonkish competence.

And yet Mitt Romney is not the conservative candidate of choice.  Instead, he’s the conservative candidate of “we’ll take him if we can’t find anyone else.”  If you look at the alternatives, the ones who have risen and then fallen, all have one thing in common:  they’ve got “the vision thing.”  Mitt is disciplined, effective, intelligent and decent, but he’s not a visionary — or, if he is, his rhetorical skills are too weak to convey that vision to the American people.

Mitt’s problem is that not all of America’s current wounds can be measured with economic charts and analyses about our friends and enemies abroad.  Both Barack Obama’s presidency and forty years of relentlessly Leftist education and media saturation have severely damaged America’s sense of self.  As a nation, we no longer have a unifying vision.  Our children have been raised to think that we are now and always have been a racist, imperialist, overbearing, heartless, capitalist monster that preys on weak, victim-class individuals and helpless third-world nations.  The fact that readily available facts put the lie to this ideology doesn’t help these children and young adults.  Instead, when the Leftist ideology that dominated their education meets the facts on the ground, that clash creates a paralyzing cognitive dissonance.  The result sees the members of Generation ZZZZZ marching through the streets, grimly clutching their iPhones and computers, whining about student loans incurred at fancy Ivy Leagues, and hysterically protesting against corporations and banks.

America’s impaired sense of self pre-dates Obama’s presidency.  Indeed, it was this pre-existing psychological damage that put Obama on the path to the White House.  He made Americans feel good about themselves, not in traditional terms (individual liberty, melting pot strength, world bastion of freedom, etc.), but in wonderful New Age terms:  we were all going to come together in a giant kumbaya circle, and throw our ill-gotten capitalist gains into a giant, village style collection bin set up in the heart of Washington, D.C..  Then, the Capitol, under Obama’s magical aegis, and with help from a supportive Democrat Congress, would lower the seas, clean the air, cause the lion (and myriad polar bears) to lie down with the lamb, and generally bring about an environmentally perfect socialist utopia.  If you liked fairies and unicorns, Obama was your man.

Back in the 1950s, had a candidate spouted this utopian vision, he would have been laughed off the national stage.  A generation raised on Depression and War was a bit too sophisticated to buy into political fairy tales.  Back then, Americans knew who they were:  tough survivors; a free people who, at the cost much American blood, had brought that freedom overseas; and innovators.  They did not believe in pixie dust.  This latest generation, however, raised on self-loathing, needed a fairy tale, with the kiss of a handsome prince magically making everything better.  To many, Obama was that prince.

The Obama fairy tale, sadly for his followers and sadly for this nation, did not end with the kiss and a formulaic “they lived happily ever after.”  Instead, we’ve had almost three years of utopian reality, which has been remarkably painful.  Obama and his crew have offended our allies, pandered to our enemies, presided over the break-up of a stable (although always ugly) Muslim Middle East, destroyed our gains in Iraq, presided over the longest recession in our history since the Great Depression, increased our debt and deficits to previously unimaginable limits that will burden our children and grandchildren, laid the groundwork for destroying the best medical system in the world (and that’s true despite inequalities in the systems), handed over billions of taxpayer dollars to cronies, killed American citizens with bizarre “crime fighting” plans across our Southern border, increased racial divisiveness to a level not seen since the early 1960s, and generally left Americans prey to a doom and gloom that seemed inconceivable when they elected the magical unicorn man.

What Americans feel now is despair.  Or as Jimmy Carter might have said, malaise.  Democrats are stuck with Obama, but Republicans have the opportunity to select a candidate who will articulate a core American vision.  As our desperate search for the anti-Romney shows, we don’t just want a competent, clean-cut wonk; we want someone who bring to life a unifying vision of this nation, not as some sort of post-American socialist paradise, but as an entirely American bastion of freedom and opportunity.

For all his baggage and, yes, periodic political instability, Newt is that spokesman.  The breadth and depth of his knowledge, his cheery demeanor, his up-beat campaign, his wit and erudition, his scary deep understanding of how Washington works, and, above all, his manifest love for America — all of these things promise voters an alternative vision to Obama’s 2008 “kumbaya world” or his 2011 “everybody is evil and stupid except for me” world.  It helps that Newt’s skeletons, rather than hiding demurely in closets, are out dancing merrily in the streets.  Everything about him will be hashed and re-hashed, but it will all be old news.  To the extent there are “surprises,” they will be mole hills, not mountains.

In this lost and confused time, Americans need a clarion voice.  If Romney is the chosen Republican candidate, I will happily vote for him, as I believe he will be a perfectly decent candidate, able to un-do much of the damage Obama and his cohorts caused at home and abroad.  But Romney is not a clarion voice, and Newt is.  It’s that “vision thing” that explains why I think Newt will win the 2012 Republican nomination — and take the White House too.  America didn’t need it in 1988, but it sure needs it now.

This morning, I heard two men talking.  In response to something the first man said, the second said, “Trust, but verify.”  The first man replied, “That’s one of the few smart things Ronald Reagan said.”  The second man answered, “It’s the only smart thing Reagan said.”

Putting aside all the smart things Reagan did, such as helping our economy to explosive growth and fatally weakening Communism’s hold on large parts of the world, I thought I’d revisit some of the things Reagan said.  Maybe my standards are low, but I think the following quotations are pretty darn smart, whether one is defining smart as extremely clever or as extremely profound:

“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

“I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.”

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.”

“But at the moment I’d like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.”

“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other

Do you have any favorites?

I already mentioned how impressed I was by Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech, which I posted here, and listed to in its entirety while folding laundry.  Listening to Reagan made that task go much faster.  It’s a fabulous speech, with each idea — most of which are as relevant today re government spending, individual freedom, and threats from abroad as they were in 1964 — beautifully developed and presented.

The speech is a great reminder that, in a pre-MTV era, in a day before spin and sound bytes, people could develop ideas.  Theoretically, they still can, but no one has the patience to listen.  My kids, who are bright enough, have a 3 second attention span.  If you haven’t caught their interest in that time, give up.

But that’s not actually the point I want to make.  I want to make a different point, about the insults that emanate from the Left (by which I really mean the media) when a credible conservative candidate appears on the scene.

I was three when Reagan made his speech.  I was still relatively young when he was governor.  This means that my first real memories of him involve his presidency.  One of the things I remember most vividly from that time is the fact that one of the “worst” insults routinely hurled at him by the media and other self-styled intellectuals on the Left was that he was an actor.  That meant, prima facie, that he was stupid.  Up until the end of the Reagan presidency, “actor” and “stupid” were cross-referenced in the Leftist dictionary.

That all changed with Clinton, when Hollywood went hog wild for a president, and he reciprocated that love.  In today’s media world, actors who are seen as credible voices on the political scene, opining on talk shows, in the news, before Congress, in the Lincoln bedroom, and at pricey White House parties.

What one discovers each time most of them speaks is that enough of them are so stupid that one is forced to conclude that, subject to a few exceptions (Reagan, Kevin Costner, and Gary Sinese, to name just three), actors really are singularly unsuited to opine on political issues.  If you check out the fun at Big Hollywood, you’ll get to see regularly the imbalance between intelligence and lack of intelligence when it comes to the Hollywood crew, with the scales weighing heavily on the unintelligent side.

UPDATE:  Two perfect examples from the entertainment area:  Sheryl Crow and Janeane Garofalo — both arrogant, ignorant and, quite possibly, delusional.

This is Ronald Reagan’s 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech.  What’s fascinating about it is that, while some of the details are dated, the overarching principles are as fresh today as they were almost 50 years ago.  That’s because freedom is an ageless concept, and that’s what Ronald Reagan is articulating.  As we watch our Federal government increasingly erase our individual liberties, we should pay ever more attention to Ronald Reagan’s understanding of the relationship between a free American and his (or her) federal government:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andrea Shea King has an interesting post today, castigating Mark Levin for his “petty” and “envious” attack on Glenn Beck.  Her post is very useful in highlighting the divisions in the conservative side of the political spectrum, divisions that are sometimes so deep, both as to style and substance, that they might foreshadow conservatives managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2012.

As for me, I neither watch nor read Beck, but occasionally find myself listening to Levin on the radio because my carpool driving falls during Levin’s show. I invariably turn Levin off after about 5 minutes. His substance is great, but his style is so angry, I can’t deal with it.  I’m with Andrea in finding off-putting the name-calling and chronic derision.

Thinking about Levin made me think of the idea of the whole notion of the Happy Warrior. Certainly Reagan had that quality. He saw and named America’s enemies, but he had a sunny optimism that instantly destroyed any attempts to call him paranoid.

Palin has that sunny quality, but 2008 and 2009 soured her a great deal, and she’s hewing towards a somewhat more paranoid, or I should say angry, style.  Lately, one has the feeling that her political views are shaped as much by personal anger as they are by common sense and love for America.  This development is unsurprising given the unprecedented personal attacks against her, but I don’t think it augurs well for her playing a huge leadership role in the near future.

Barack Obama is an interesting study in the Happy Warrior phenomenon because he lulled willing, credulous Americans into thinking that this man with a history of personal anger and angry associations was indeed a Happy Warrior. What a lie.  But you can’t just blame Obama or the even the media.  The American public was perfectly willing to be fooled by the Magic Negro Happy Warrior, so that the voters themselves could have for themselves that happy feeling of post-racialism.

Obama’s current flailing in the opinion polls reflects, not only his policy failures, but the fact that Americans are learning to dislike this whiny, angry, arrogant and dour man in the White House.  Pre-election promise aside, he has about as much charm, optimism and warmth as “Jimmah” Carter.  This is political death.  As politicians from Teddy Roosevelt, to Franklin Roosevelt, to Eisenhower, to Kennedy, to Reagan have shown, Americans want an optimistic leader, one who believes in them and their potential.

The immediately problem as I see it is that conservatives don’t have a viable Happy Warrior candidate on the 2012 horizon.  While I do see cheery, feisty up-and-comers, such as Rubio and Ryan, they’re too young and untried for 2012.

My question for you is:  Who am I forgetting?  What true happy conservative warriors are out there to uplift the American public in 2012?

UPDATE:  With the exception of Palin, most of the Happy Warriors named in the comments (and I agree with people’s assessment’s there) are in entertainment and punditry.  Only Palin is a politician.  Based on this post, Don Quixote and I got into a larger discussion about American optimism.  We wondered if 40 years of “progressive” education, which teaches children that all Americans are either bullies or victims, has created a generation incapable of the happy optimism and love of America that characterized both Reagan and Walt Disney. Even those of us who love our country are defensive about that love, rather than boundlessly and reflexively cheerful about America’s greatness.

Ronald Reagan, speaking to Evangelicals about the Soviet Union, in 1983:

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness — pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world…. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man.

(See also Reagan on the crackdowns in Poland.)

Natan Sharansky, regarding the power Reagan’s words gave dissidents in their daily fight against the cognitive dissonance created by living under a Soviet regime that routinely perverted simple truths:

It was the great brilliant moment when we learned that Ronald Reagan had proclaimed the Soviet Union an Evil Empire before the entire world. This was the moment. It was the brightest, most glorious day. Finally a spade had been called a spade. Finally, Orwell’s Newspeak was dead. President Reagan had from that moment made it impossible for anyone in the West to continue closing their eyes to the real nature of the Soviet Union. It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it. For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us. The lie had been exposed and could never, ever be untold now. This was the end of Lenin’s “Great October Bolshevik Revolution” and the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution — Reagan’s Revolution.

Barack Obama regarding citizen protests in Iran against a manifestly rigged election:

“It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling … in Iranian elections,” Obama said. “What I will repeat, and what I said yesterday, is when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, … it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people, and it is my hope the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices.”

to meddle (verb):

to involve oneself in a matter without right or invitation; interfere officiously and unwantedly: Stop meddling in my personal life!

*******************

Iranian citizens went into their election knowing it was rigged.  How could it not have been when the only candidates were four men hand-picked by the mullahs.  Nevertheless, Iranians had at least the illusion of democracy, because they could vote and, presumably, their votes would count as to those four party men.  The disillusion arose because the mullah’s expressed their disdain for even this pale simulation of Democracy.  Rather than allowing the Iranian’s meaningless votes to appear to matter, they thumbed their noses at the whole process and appointed their guy instead.  It’s one thing to suspect that you’re being played for a fool, but still to be able to assume some semblance of dignity.  It’s another thing to be exposed as a fool, and to have the small dram of dignity stripped away entirely.  Shame is a powerful motivator, and the Iranians have been shamed by their own government.

With shame at their back, Iranians have taken to the streets in numbers unseen since the revolution in 1979.  The lines are clear:  on one side are unarmed citizens demanding that their rulers reconcile their pseudo-democratic rhetoric with actual democratic acts; on the other side are guns.  Faced with this situation in the past, Ronald Reagan unashamedly stood up in support of the citizens.  As leader of the free world, Reagan understood that, if he did not speak out for freedom, he would essentially be disarming those brave citizens armed only with their belief in the American concept of liberal and the rights of individuals.

Our current President’s approach is strikingly different.  Obama has declined to make any statement whatsoever, because he is afraid to meddle.  The past meddling to which he refers, of course, is to the CIA’s active participation in overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq back in 1953, and putting in his place the Shah of Iran. Now that was some serious meddling.

Here, Obama is not being asked to do anything, he is just being asked to say something.  As we’ve noted before, though, Obama believes his words are the equivalent of acts.  God-like, he believes that, if he were to say “let there be . . . something (such as light),” that means that there will be this . . . something (such as light).  For this reason, he believes that his taking a Reaganesque posture and speaking out openly against evil, corruption, and antidemocratic impulses is identical to the physical act of placing a bomb under the Mullahs and lighting the fuse.  In his own mind, his powers of speech are so tremendous that thought and deed are inseparable.

Taking away Obama’s belief in his own mystical powers, Reagan has proven that speech can change people’s behaviors.  There is tremendous power in making a moral speech at a pivotal time.  That was what Sharansky was saying about Reagan’s mere words:  when you live in a corrupt society that forces people to accept as true things their own senses tell them are false, having someone “call a spade a spade” is, in fact, the equivalent of letting there be light.  Speaking truth to evil shines a light on that evil and lets oppressed people believe in themselves and their cause.

The importance of speaking truth to evil is incalculable.  For people who have no tangible weapons, their only weapon is their belief in the truth.  Without that, they are simply so many targets for well-armed totalitarian regime.

What this means is that Obama, though his silence is in fact meddling, because he’s taking sides.  Without creating a light of freedom to shine the way for Iran’s oppressed masses, he is casting his (and America’s) whole weight on the side with the guns.  There is no middle ground here.  You’re either for freedom or you’re against it, and if you refuse to raise your voice for freedom, you’ve loaded another bullet in the oppressor’s gun.

An ardent Thatcherite in England has gotten approval for a statute of Ronald Reagan to be erected outside the U.S. Embassy in London.  Unsurprisingly, given the world in which we live, feelings are mixed — not from the British, but from the current administration:

An interior designer from Chelsea who is a leading light in the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group has won approval for a statue of the great American conservative Ronald Reagan to be erected outside the US Embassy in London. The project was given the nod on Thursday night by Westminster City Council’s planning sub-committee in a break with its policy of allowing memorials only to people who have been dead for at least ten years.

[snip]

The 10ft bronze statue of the man hailed by Margaret Thatcher for winning the Cold War without firing a shot will be placed on a 6ft plinth of Portland stone outside the embassy building in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, near an existing statue of Dwight D Eisenhower, the war hero President, unveiled by Mrs Thatcher in 1989.

The architects behind the project, the same firm responsible for the statues of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square and the Queen Mother near Buckingham Palace, say that it was enthusiastically backed by the former ambassador, Robert Tuttle, who left office in February.

[snip]

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the current inhabitants of the embassy — who are still waiting for President Obama to confirm Mr Tuttle’s replacement — appear less keen to have a larger-than-life statue of the darling of the American Right on their doorstep.

“This is not something that we have requested or actively tried to get brought about,” an embassy spokesman said yesterday. “We’re happy to have our presidents honoured but this statue was not a US Government initiative.”

Asked whether the mission would take the statue with it when it leaves Grosvenor Square for its new head-quarters in Nine Elms, south of the Thames, he replied: “It’s not our statue.”

The only person who sounded an even less gracious note than the Obama administration was a representative from the Green party:

But Jenny Jones, the Green who chairs the London Assembly’s planning committee, expressed her “disbelief” at Westminster’s decision. “What a ridiculous person to put on top of a monument,” she said. “I can’t remember anything particularly clever that he said, I can’t remember anything good he did.”

What about ending the Cold War? “I think there were other factors involved in the Cold War. It would be the same as putting up a statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger — will they do that next?”

Excuse me?!  Did she just insult both my current and past governor, as well as my past President?  I’m shocked! Shocked!

But on a more serious note, is it me, or is there something deeply disturbing about the new administration’s bone deep hatred and disrespect for those past administrations that don’t comport with its statist, Leftist view of the world?

Now, I freely admit that I’ve probably said a few unkind things in the past about that idiotic, antisemitic fool, Jimmy Carter, but I’m a private citizen.  I’m not the representative of all of the people of the United States of America, nor of the continuity of American government in England, dating back to John Adams’ first appearance there.  I can afford low standards; the official American administration can’t.

On the positive side, I think that it’s crass demontrations such as these, not to mention the disconnect between media adulation and facts on the ground, that is seeing the bloom come coming off the rose.  For my Mom, an ardent, aged Jewish Democrat, the tipping point is the relentless media assurance that Michelle Obama is a beauty.  Since my Mom’s own eyes tell her this is a lie, she’s wondering what other untruths the media is peddling.  I helped hasten this process by showing her Sally Quinn’s ridiculous Mother’s Day article about Michelle’s arms, which left my Mom reeling.  For the first time ever, Mom is beginning to suspect that she’s been had.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I believe this is the same speech Mark Levin broadcast yesterday.  It’s a marvelous speech, that carefully, clearly, factually and wittily spells out the economic and national security issues facing the United States, many of which parallel those we see today.  If you have a half hour, listen to it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As is appropriate after a disastrous election, there is a lot of soul searching going on on the conservative side, trying to figure out what went wrong so that we can do it right the next time.  I see this in phone calls from relatives, lunches with friends, gatherings with Marin’s cryptoconservatives, and the hundreds of pages of articles and blog posts from conservatives:  how can we fix this?

It seems appropriate, therefore, to remind you of Ronald Reagan’s words, spoken before Carter got elected and before four years of Carter-nomics, but still spoken at a time of comprehensive conservative defeats.  I know some are arguing that it’s time to bury Reagan once and for all and let him rest in peace, but there is no doubt but that the principles he enunciates about the role of government in American life are as vital now as they were back in 1975, when he first spoke them.  I’ve therefore reprinted his speech, below, with my comments.

Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. [We know the feeling.]  It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. [Pundits haven't changed.]  But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate.

Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached “the gospel,” in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism which was, in truth, a call to collectivism.  [Interestingly, Obama won by pretending moderate liberalism and then instantly practicing a radical socialist agenda.]

Now, it is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own.  [My liberal husband assured me that Obama was running to the middle.]

Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. [Obama promised to get government spending under control.]  Even George McGovern donned sackcloth and ashes and did penance for the good people of South Dakota.

But let’s not be so naive as to think we are witnessing a mass conversion to the principles of conservatism. Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type. In their view, apparently, the ends justified the means.  [Could Reagan call it or what?]

The “Young Turks” had campaigned against “evil politicians.” They turned against committee chairmen of their own party, displaying a taste and talent as cutthroat power politicians quite in contrast to their campaign rhetoric and idealism. Still, we must not forget that they molded their campaigning to fit what even they recognized was the mood of the majority. [And this is absolutely true.  As much as anything else, Obama won because, after 8 years of relentless demonization, the majority of Americans truly were willing to settle for nothing more than "change" no matter how meaningless or even dangerous.]

And we must see to it that the people are reminded of this as they now pursue their ideological goals—and pursue them they will.

I know you are aware of the national polls which show that a greater (and increasing) number of Americans—Republicans, Democrats and independents—classify themselves as “conservatives” than ever before. [We wish.  Although it's hard to tell because, on the issues, people are conservative, but the demonization of Republicans has resulted in their proclaiming themselves to be liberals or Democrats.]  And a poll of rank-and-file union members reveals dissatisfaction with the amount of power their own leaders have assumed, and a resentment of their use of that power for partisan politics. Would it shock you to know that in that poll 68 percent of rank-and-file union members of this country came out endorsing right-to-work legislation?  [Does anyone know what the results would be now?]

These polls give cause for some optimism, but at the same time reveal a confusion that exists and the need for a continued effort to “spread the word.”

In another recent survey, of 35,000 college and university students polled, three-fourths blame American business and industry for all of our economic and social ills. The same three-fourths think the answer is more (and virtually complete) regimentation and government control of all phases of business—including the imposition of wage and price controls. Yet, 80 percent in the same poll want less government interference in their own lives!  [These words could have been spoken yesterday morning and been just as accurate.]

In 1972 the people of this country had a clear-cut choice, based on the issues—to a greater extent than any election in half a century. In overwhelming numbers they ignored party labels, not so much to vote for a man or even a policy as to repudiate a philosophy. In doing so they repudiated that final step into the welfare state—that call for the confiscation and redistribution of their earnings on a scale far greater than what we now have. They repudiated the abandonment of national honor and a weakening of this nation’s ability to protect itself.  [This time, befuddled, bedazzled, ignorant and lied to, the people did not make that same choice.]

A study has been made that is so revealing that I’m not surprised it has been ignored by a certain number of political commentators and columnists. The political science department of Georgetown University researched the mandate of the 1972 election and recently presented its findings at a seminar.

Taking several major issues which, incidentally, are still the issues of the day, they polled rank-and-file members of the Democratic party on their approach to these problems. Then they polled the delegates to the two major national conventions—the leaders of the parties.

They found the delegates to the Republican convention almost identical in their responses to those of the rank-and-file Republicans. Yet, the delegates to the Democratic convention were miles apart from the thinking of their own party members.  [Again, once one crosses out the true believers -- the nutroots -- I suspect this would still be true.  Contrary to their party leaders, blacks and hispanics do not support abortion or gay marriage.  Contrary to their party leaders, American Jews, no matter how naive or stupid, actually do support Israel.  They have a blind allegiance to the Democratic party, even as they do not support many of its key policies or ideological directions.]

The mandate of 1972 still exists. The people of America have been confused and disturbed by events since that election, but they hold an unchanged philosophy.

Our task is to make them see that what we represent is identical to their own hopes and dreams of what America can and should be. If there are questions as to whether the principles of conservatism hold up in practice, we have the answers to them. Where conservative principles have been tried, they have worked. Gov. Meldrim Thomson is making them work in New Hampshire; so is Arch Moore in West Virginia and Mills Godwin in Virginia. Jack Williams made them work in Arizona and I’m sure Jim Edwards will in South Carolina.  [And again, this is still true.  The disaster zones in American are the places in which Democratic policies have held unending sway, and this is true whether you're looking at D.C., Chicago, L.A., New Orleans, or any other historically Democratic political zone.]

If you will permit me, I can recount my own experience in California.

When I went to Sacramento eight years ago, I had the belief that government was no deep, dark mystery, that it could be operated efficiently by using the same common sense practiced in our everyday life, in our homes, in business and private affairs.

The “lab test” of my theory – California—was pretty messed up after eight years of a road show version of the Great Society. [As a victim of California public education, I can agree with him completely about what he found when he became governor.]  Our first and only briefing came from the outgoing director of finance, who said: “We’re spending $1 million more a day than we’re taking in. I have a golf date. Good luck!” That was the most cheerful news we were to hear for quite some time.

California state government was increasing by about 5,000 new employees a year. We were the welfare capital of the world with 16 percent of the nation’s caseload. Soon, California’s caseload was increasing by 40,000 a month.  [Boy, talk about history repeating itself, only a scale larger than Reagan could ever have imagined.]

We turned to the people themselves for help. Two hundred and fifty experts in the various fields volunteered to serve on task forces at no cost to the taxpayers. They went into every department of state government and came back with 1,800 recommendations on how modern business practices could be used to make government more efficient. We adopted 1,600 of them.

We instituted a policy of “cut, squeeze and trim” and froze the hiring of employees as replacements for retiring employees or others leaving state service.  [Bet that would still work, even thought it would be painful to begin with.]

After a few years of struggling with the professional welfarists [again, some things never change, and I love that phrase], we again turned to the people. First, we obtained another task force and, when the legislature refused to help implement its recommendations, we presented the recommendations to the electorate.

It still took some doing. The legislature insisted our reforms would not work; that the needy would starve in the streets; that the workload would be dumped on the counties; that property taxes would go up and that we’d run up a deficit the first year of $750 million.  [Hmm.  Haven't I been hearing something like that -- exactly like that -- unceasingly from the "progressives," only with larger predicted numbers or more dire pronouncements?]

That was four years ago. Today, the needy have had an average increase of 43 percent in welfare grants in California, but the taxpayers have saved $2 billion by the caseload not increasing that 40,000 a month. Instead, there are some 400,000 fewer on welfare today than then.

Forty of the state’s 58 counties have reduced property taxes for two years in a row (some for three). That $750-million deficit turned into an $850-million surplus which we returned to the people in a one-time tax rebate. That wasn’t easy. One state senator described that rebate as “an unnecessary expenditure of public funds.”  [Ah.  California's golden days, when people made money and government understood that it was not responsible for rejiggering and controlling society.]

For more than two decades governments—federal, state, local—have been increasing in size two-and-a-half times faster than the population increase. In the last 10 years they have increased the cost in payroll seven times as fast as the increase in numbers.  [Sadly, since Reagan's time, both in the fed and local governments, this has been true, and it's been true under both Republican and Democratic leadership.  It's worse under the latter, but exists under the former.  As I noted in an earlier post, our expectations continue to increase, with strides in medicine, longevity, technology, etc., but we're also simply greedy.]

We have just turned over to a new administration in Sacramento a government virtually the same size it was eight years ago. With the state’s growth rate, this means that government absorbed a workload increase, in some departments as much as 66 percent.

We also turned over—for the first time in almost a quarter of a century—a balanced budget and a surplus of $500 million. In these eight years just passed, we returned to the people in rebates, tax reductions and bridge toll reductions $5.7 billion. All of this is contrary to the will of those who deplore conservatism and profess to be liberals, yet all of it is pleasing to its citizenry.

Make no mistake, the leadership of the Democratic party is still out of step with the majority of Americans. [As Obama demands more and more from taxpayers and, with a complicit Congress enacts ever more extreme policies, these words will become increasingly true, I think.  And we can only be grateful that, unlike Venezuela and Zimbabwe, in two, four, six and even eight years, voters will still be able to have a say in the matter (although I wouldn't be at all surprised if, aside from messing with the census, legalizing massive numbers of presumably Democratic voting immigrants, and clamping down on a free media, the Obamanites don't also try to destroy presidental term limits).]

Speaker Carl Albert recently was quoted as saying that our problem is “60 percent recession, 30 percent inflation and 10 percent energy.” That makes as much sense as saying two and two make 22.

Without inflation there would be no recession. And unless we curb inflation we can see the end of our society and economic system. The painful fact is we can only halt inflation by undergoing a period of economic dislocation—a recession, if you will. [The actor got it.  He totally got it.  There is no way to get out of a recession without some short term pain.  If you try to avoid the short term pain, as Obama is doing with his massive spending programs, all you end up with is unending pain.]

We can take steps to ease the suffering of some who will be hurt more than others, but if we turn from fighting inflation and adopt a program only to fight recession we are on the road to disaster. [Ditto -- and completely prescient.]

In his first address to Congress, the president asked Congress to join him in an all-out effort to balance the budget. I think all of us wish that he had re-issued that speech instead of this year’s budget message.

What side can be taken in a debate over whether the deficit should be $52 billion or $70 billion or $80 billion preferred by the profligate Congress?  [Point being that, once you commit to spending, arguing over amounts is almost irrelevant.  It's like the joke about the man who asks a woman, "Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?"  When she says "yes," he asks "Will you sleep with me for ten dollars?"  She draws back in disgust.  "What do you take me for?  A whore?"  His answer:  "Ma'am, we've already established what you are.  Now, we're just haggling over the price."]

Inflation has one cause and one cause only: government spending more than government takes in. And the cure to inflation is a balanced budget. We know, of course, that after 40 years of social tinkering and Keynesian experimentation that we can’t do this all at once, but it can be achieved. Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue: you have to learn to say “no.” [The hell with "Yes, we can."  What we should be saying is "No, we must not."]

This is no time to repeat the shopworn panaceas of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society. [Isn't it funny how those are exactly the panaceas we're hearing this time, too?]  John Kenneth Galbraith, who, in my opinion, is living proof that economics is an inexact science, has written a new book. It is called “Economics and the Public Purpose.” In it, he asserts that market arrangements in our economy have given us inadequate housing, terrible mass transit, poor health care and a host of other miseries. And then, for the first time to my knowledge, he advances socialism as the answer to our problems.

Shorn of all side issues and extraneous matter, the problem underlying all others is the worldwide contest for the hearts and minds of mankind. Do we find the answers to human misery in freedom as it is known, or do we sink into the deadly dullness of the Socialist ant heap? [If you're an Obamanic, right now you're screaming "Ant heap, ant heap!"]

Those who suggest that the latter is some kind of solution are, I think, open to challenge. Let’s have no more theorizing when actual comparison is possible. There is in the world a great nation, larger than ours in territory and populated with 250 million capable people. It is rich in resources and has had more than 50 uninterrupted years to practice socialism without opposition.  [At this point, Reagan's speech takes off in a way impossible to comprehend today.  In the mid-1970s, the vast majority of American voters still recognized that life under Communism was dreadful and that it was a zero sum game economically.  Ironically, now that Communism is gone and people have actually been able to speak out about just how dreadful it was, the perversion of our education and media system means that people today are less aware not more aware of just how dreadful Communism was.  They think Reagan's "evil empire" concept was just a parochial American fear, rather than the recognition of the true evil that Communism really was.]

We could match them, but it would take a little doing on our part. We’d have to cut our paychecks back by 75 percent; move 60 million workers back to the farm; abandon two-thirds of our steel-making capacity; destroy 40 million television sets; tear up 14 of every 15 miles of highway; junk 19 of every 20 automobiles; tear up two-thirds of our railroad track; knock down 70 percent of our houses; and rip out nine out of every 10 telephones. Then, all we have to do is find a capitalist country to sell us wheat on credit to keep us from starving!

Our people are in a time of discontent. Our vital energy supplies are threatened by possibly the most powerful cartel in human history. [History is repeating itself -- and our Democratic leaders will not allow us to utilize our own abundant resources.]  Our traditional allies in Western Europe are experiencing political and economic instability bordering on chaos.  [Wow!  Another blast from the past.]

We seem to be increasingly alone in a world grown more hostile, but we let our defenses shrink to pre-Pearl Harbor levels. [We haven't yet let our defenses shrink, but Obama has the defense budget on the chopping block.  And unlike Reagan's time, when it was a Cold War, Islamist attacks worldwide make it clear that this is a hot war, albeit one carried out by non-governmental armies.]  And we are conscious that in Moscow the crash build-up of arms continues. The SALT II agreement in Vladivostok, if not re-negotiated, guarantees the Soviets a clear missile superiority sufficient to make a “first strike” possible, with little fear of reprisal. Yet, too many congressmen demand further cuts in our own defenses, including delay if not cancellation of the B-1 bomber.

I realize that millions of Americans are sick of hearing about Indochina, and perhaps it is politically unwise to talk of our obligation to Cambodia and South Vietnam. But we pledged—in an agreement that brought our men home and freed our prisoners—to give our allies arms and ammunition to replace on a one-for-one basis what they expend in resisting the aggression of the Communists who are violating the cease-fire and are fully aided by their Soviet and Red Chinese allies. Congress has already reduced the appropriation to half of what they need and threatens to reduce it even more.

Can we live with ourselves if we, as a nation, betray our friends and ignore our pledged word?  [We could.  We did.  And we elected the man and the party who want to do it all over again.]  And, if we do, who would ever trust us again? [Most don't.]  To consider committing such an act so contrary to our deepest ideals is symptomatic of the erosion of standards and values. And this adds to our discontent.

We did not seek world leadership; it was thrust upon us. It has been our destiny almost from the first moment this land was settled. If we fail to keep our rendezvous with destiny or, as John Winthrop said in 1630, “Deal falsely with our God,” we shall be made “a story and byword throughout the world.”

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don ‘t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party”—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.  [Boy, they did that in 1974 too?  And isn't that exactly the fight that's going on right now?]

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?  [That's a marvelous point.  We don't shape the message to the inchoate voter.  We believe in the message and, if we build it, the voters will come.]

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

[And the following is the "stand up and cheer part."  In it, Reagan simply and clearly articulates conservative principles that worked then and should work now.  These statements about the economy and national security are all we need to build a platform to which Americans will come, regardless of their particular place on the conservative spectrum.]

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.

And let it provide indexing—adjusting the brackets to the cost of living—so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.

Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.

Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.

Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.

And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.”

We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.