The home front: what to do about domestic policy.

IT has become a bit of a conservative cliche to say that we are victims of our own success. Like a lot of cliches, this one contains some truth. We had a hand in defeating Communism, ending inflation, reforming welfare, cutting tax rates, and reducing crime, and so the public no longer needs us to accomplish these objectives. But we are also, and less paradoxically, victims of our own failure. We have failed to cut the federal budget, or rein in entitlements, or reduce the level of regulation; we have failed to uproot racial preferences or control the borders; we have largely failed to bring school choice to many of our cities; and it has been a while since we have even tried to do any of these things.

The opportunities for conservative reform have not been exhausted. The realization of those opportunities may, however, require two adjustments. The first is a matter of emphasis. Conservatism is both a political enterprise and a set of ideals, principles, and dispositions. It does not wish to become either an academic hobby or a patronage scheme. For the last twelve years, conservatives have grown ever more narrowly concerned with bringing about Republican electoral victories. They have maneuvered within the limits of the possible, but worked less and less to expand those limits. That set of priorities may have made sense at the time; but with conservatives out of power and conservatism out of fashion, it makes no sense now. By all means we should be thinking about the next election. But there is also long-term work to be done: the kind of work that can change the terms on which the third election from now is contested.

We should also adjust our attitude. We have fallen into a bad habit of coming up with solutions before identifying problems. Conservatives' advocacy of a flat tax is a case in point. It might have all sorts of advantages, but it is a response to no pressing national problem. (The complexity and inefficiency of the tax code are merely an annoyance and a waste.) The campaign against earmarks, if it is successful, will improve no American's life. When conservatism has been successful, it has been treated as a source of wisdom about how to meet real challenges, and not as a blueprint for an ideal government. Confronted with stagflation, for example, conservatives prescribed tax cuts and monetary restraint. The difference I have in mind is that between the 1980 and 1964 campaigns; between statecraft and ideology.

Of late, we have listed in the wrong direction, and as a result the conservative program (to the extent one has existed) has been oddly detached from American life. So characteristic has this mode become for conservatives that it has colored the reception of those of our proposals that really are serious attempts to grapple with real dilemmas. The best proposals to reform Social Security fell into that category, but such reform came to seem like an ideological hobbyhorse pursued as an end in itself, rather than as a means toward the end of a sustainable retirement system for Americans.

What follows is an attempt to sketch how characteristically conservative insights might be applied to a few dimensions of our national life.

TAXES

Taxes have been the most powerful domestic-policy issue for conservatives for a generation. When Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and others married the Republican party and the conservative movement to tax-cutting, the top marginal tax rates were punitive; they were a serious impediment to economic growth; and they were a justifiable source of great resentment from middle-class taxpayers who found their rates rising as a result of inflation.