Human
Events...
Lessons
of History?
by Thomas Sowell
11/29/2011
It
used to be common for people to
urge us to learn “the lessons of history.” But history gets much less
attention
these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are
more
likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political
correctness.
Even
among those who still invoke the
lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently from
others.
Talk
show host Michael Medved, for
example, apparently thinks the Republicans need a centrist presidential
candidate in 2012. He said, “Most political battles are won by seizing
the
center.” Moreover, he added: “Anyone who believes otherwise ignores the
electoral experience of the last 50 years.”
But
just when did Ronald Reagan, with
his two landslide election victories, “seize the center”? For that
matter, when
did Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a record four consecutive presidential
election
victories, “seize the center”?
There
have been a long string of
Republican presidential candidates who seized the center -- and lost
elections.
Thomas E. Dewey, for example, seized the center against Harry Truman in
1948.
Even though Truman was so unpopular at the outset that the “New
Republic”
magazine urged him not to run, and polls consistently had Dewey ahead,
Truman
clearly stood for something -- and for months he battled for what he
stood for.
That
turned out to be enough to beat
Dewey, who simply stood in the center.
It
is very doubtful that most of the
people who voted for Harry Truman agreed with him on all the things he
stood
for. But they knew he stood for something, and they agreed with enough
of it to
put him back in the White House.
It
is equally doubtful that most of
the people who voted for Ronald Reagan in his two landslide victories
agreed
with all his positions. But they agreed with enough of them to put him
in the
White House to replace Jimmy Carter, who stood in the center, even if
it was
only a center of confusion.
President
Gerald Ford, after narrowly
beating off a rare challenge by Ronald Reagan to a sitting president of
his own
party, seized the center in the general election -- and lost to an
initially
almost totally unknown governor from Georgia.
President
George H.W. Bush, after
initially winning election by coming across as another Ronald Reagan,
with his
“Read my lips, no new taxes” speech, turned “kinder and gentler” -- to
everyone
except the taxpayers -- once he was in office. In other ways as well,
he seized
the center. And lost to another unknown governor.
More
recently, we have seen two more
Republican candidates who seized the center -- Senators Bob Dole in
1996 and
John McCain in 2008 -- go down to defeat, McCain at the hands of a man
that
most people had never even heard of, just three years earlier.
Michael
Medved, however, reads history
differently.
To
him, Barry Goldwater got clobbered
in the 1964 elections because of his strong conservatism. But did his
opponent,
Lyndon Johnson, seize the center? Johnson was at least as far to the
left as
Goldwater was to the right. And Goldwater scared the daylights out of
people
with the way he expressed himself, especially on foreign policy, where
he came
across as reckless.
On
a personal note, I wrote a two-line
verse that year, titled “The Goldwater Administration:”
Fifteen
minutes of laissez-faire,
While the Russian missiles are in the air.
Senator
Goldwater was not crazy enough
to start a nuclear war. But the way he talked sometimes made it seem as
if he
were. Ronald Reagan would later be elected and re-elected taking
positions
essentially the same as those on which Barry Goldwater lost big time.
Reagan
was simply a lot better at articulating his beliefs.
Michael
Medved uses the 2008 defeat of
Tea Party candidates for the Senate, in three states where Democrats
were
vulnerable, as another argument against those who do not court the
center. But
these were candidates whose political ineptness was the problem, not
conservatism.
Candidates
should certainly reach out
to a broad electorate. But the question is whether they reach out by
promoting
their own principles to others or by trying to be all things to all
people.
Read
this and other columns at Human
Events
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