COMMON CAUSE:

The Dawning Bush Establishment?: Republican dominance may be in the offing for a long time. (Robert L. Bartley, January 20, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

Prior to the Great Depression, the American Establishment was rooted in big business, led by the House of Morgan. But Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to tag the old Establishment with the Depression, and with World War II success managed to build his own. Junior officials such as [Dean] Acheson, rapidly promoted on the basis of merit, emerged self-confident and able to retain respect despite failures like the Korean War. We have just recently had a spate of books celebrating the greatest generation, six wise men and the like.

These thoughts come to mind by what seems to me a radically different political and social texture since the last elections. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the other two branches of government, Democrats have to fear not only losing elections. They have to fear that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and, yes, Karl Rove could conceivably consolidate a new Establishment, dominating the next half-century as FDR's progeny dominated the last one. [...]

[T]he believing, conservative and Republican denominations are prospering, while tepid, liberal and Democratic mainstream denominations are dwindling away. Academia, another traditional transmission belt, is now dominated by radicals; even here there are stirrings, with Harvard President Larry Summers backing the military, and Columbia University revoking a Bancroft Prize given to politically correct but fraudulent scholarship. In any event, society has thrown up academic alternatives such as Heritage, Hoover, AEI and Cato.

On the political front, Democrats have a tough row asserting moral authority after Bill Clinton, and after winning Senate seats by bending the rules in New Jersey and avoiding a recount in South Dakota. They face foreboding 2004 arithmetic. Republicans who won Texas get to redistrict House seats there. In the Senate, the GOP will defend 15 mostly safe seats while the Democrats defend 19, eight of which are in states Bush carried by five points or more. Filibusters against the Bush tax plan or judicial nominees are only likely to dig Democrats further into the moral and political hole, especially if they take place in the context of war in Iraq and confrontation with North Korea.

There are no sure things in life, and President Bush could still come a cropper either abroad or on the home front. A new Establishment remains only a possibility. But remember that for all the Texas twang George Bush is an aristocrat--Yale, Skull and Bones, Harvard, a presidential son. And that FDR, castigated as "a traitor to his class," showed what can happen when an aristocrat turns against the old establishment. We may be witnessing not only a change in political power but, perhaps more important, a change in moral authority.

One of the most important things that would have to change, in order for this to become a reality, is that President Bush and company would have to convey a sense of mission to young conservatives, that they can change the world by taking over government, academics, media, and the clergy, the same way the previous generation--motivated in large part by Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign--took over Republican politics. Nothing would be better for the long term health of the culture than a massive influx of conservatives into academia and the media, who view it as their mission to deconstruct the damage done by the 60s radicals to our colleges and the post-Watergate generation to our news media in particular. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2003 10:04 AM