QUESTIONS OF GREATNESS.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 25-OCT-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Folder: The Campaign Trail

In 1997, William Kristol and David Brooks, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offered a critique of the Republican Party of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. "What's missing from today's American conservatism is America," they wrote. "The left has always blamed America first. Conservatives once deplored this. They defended America. And when they sought to improve America, they did so by recalling Americans to their highest principles, and by calling them forward to a grand destiny. What is missing from today's conservatism is the appeal to American greatness." The forefathers the authors claimed for what they termed "national-greatness conservatism" were Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and in the 2000 primary campaign its champion was Senator John McCain. It was never entirely clear what kind of grand destiny Kristol, Brooks, and McCain had in mind; the anti-government ideology of the modern Republican Party doesn't leave much room for crusades as ambitious as ending slavery and trust-busting....

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