Perspective on the Election

Conservatives and Republicans are still offering opinions on  Romney’s loss to Obama. Some of the more gloomy and pessimistic are proclaiming that the country is just plain lost – that given Obama’s execrable political beliefs, obnoxious personality, and awful record and given that Romney ran a fairly competent campaign and drew an explicit contrast between his less statist and Obama’s more statist views and plans, it is time to conclude that the quality and moral fiber of the citizenry have declined irreparably from the heights of earlier times.  Where formerly we were told that conservatism wins every time it is tried, now we are hearing that the American people just aren’t  good enough any more to do the right  thing. Some conservatives blame this on what they see as  morally lax baby boomers and gen –X and –Y ‘ers, who make up most of the electorate.   Others think there are just too many blacks and Hispanics in the country for things ever to be made right.  Some of these pundits get downright apocalyptic, which would not matter much if not for the risk that too many decent citizens might  take  them seriously.  A look at history can help people to calm down and look at the problems and dangers more realistically. People do not even need to look back that far.

Forty eight years ago in 1964 the country elected Lyndon Johnson – a man fully as arrogant, personally repugnant, corrupt, and power mad and every bit as big a statist as Barack Obama -  president in a historic landslide over Barry Goldwater. The differences between the candidates were clear and well drawn. Goldwater campaigned on an explicitly stated agenda of more liberty and respect for individual rights, and Johnson campaigned on an agenda of expanding the power of the state.  (Social issues were largely irrelevant in the election and mainly ignored in the campaigns.)   Goldwater carried only a handful of states, and the Republicans were hammered in contests for seats in the house and senate. Johnson won his victory without the vote of a single gen –X or –Y slacker or self indulgent baby boomer. (The voting age at that time was still twenty one, and the oldest boomers were only eighteen.) He won with an electorate made up overwhelmingly of white people and mainly of members of the so-called greatest generation and their elders in a nation as yet untouched by the alleged moral rot of the late 1960’s and following years.  Conservatism of the limited government sort was tried, and it did not win. There clearly was not a majority among voters for either more freedom or for restraining the growing power of government.

Some  people  saw that election as a final and irreversible victory for a continually expanding government. Of course that is not how things turned out, and, while Johnson did a great deal of damage, the country eventually was able to change course and recover. Those facts are worth remembering to help put Obama’s victory and threat into perspective. Sometimes bad candidates with bad ideas win elections. That leads to bad results, but bad is not the same as fatal. There is always another election later, and voters are notoriously fickle.  The sky may be dark, but it is not falling in. Things can turn around and get better. They have before.

 Obama is bad enough that it may make sense to take precautions against some really bad, though unlikely, outcomes, just as a person might buy insurance against his house burning down without thinking it is going to happen. That is quite different from expecting the worst or giving up on the country and its people. Conservatives should remember that there is more to a person’s character than the way he votes, more to a culture than its politics, and more to a society than its government. It is okay to tell people to keep their powder dry. It is not  time to tell them to head for the hills.