After Obama, conservatives should look West

At the Iowa Freedom Summit, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) gave a noteworthy speech. Commentator Michael Barone writes that he could rise on a singular speech given there, much as Obama rose from a speech he gave in 2007. But remember former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), who ran for president in 2012? He was an attractive and capable candidate, like Walker, and might have been a great president. But with little previous media exposure, he was among the first to drop out. One must run at least twice to win today unless, like former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) or Hillary Clinton, they already know you through famous family or celebrity connections. This might be a bad thing for a democracy, but it is the way we live today, grasping at the tail of a media tiger tearing ahead full speed, doomed if we let go. Possibly doomed even for hanging on.

{mosads}But any comparison with Obama should be held back. No one has mastered the public forms as he has, even at an early age. His presence today in the Oval Office brings final fulfillment of an age begun when William Lloyd Garrison began his newspaper in 1831 with the motto, “Our country is the world. Our countrymen are all mankind.”

A new era is ahead, as vast and auspicious as the passing age. In my opinion, it will address the awakening and fulfillment of the American West. It hasn’t begun yet, but the rising presidential contenders must be able to grasp its enormity and potential. A country, a world, like Garrison proposed, is a proper foundation, but it is still prehistory. Fuller destiny awaits America. Candidates must understand the potential. But the media tiger today — fully fascinated by Bruce Jenner’s gender identity and the air density of footballs — barely seems up to the task.

Against Walker, Hillary Clinton would likely win, as she likely would against seven of the eight others at the Iowa summit (excluding former Texas Gov. Rick Perry [R]) who have declared interest. Some of them are either running for vice president or doing a dry run for 2020. So for now, Clinton has an opportunity if Republicans commit again to the Taoist joy and purity of failure (like former Republican nominees Bob Dole and John McCain) and they have the tendency. Clinton’s Hollywood helpers understand this.

But the suggestion of hipster, dissident, nihilist Brooklyn — a generational culture characteristically represented today by the ludicrous and comic former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (whose wedding was officiated by President Bill Clinton), and home of controversial and contentious New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) — for the Democratic convention suggests a retreat; a final exit, a “last exit to Brooklyn.”

To counter, Republicans should engage the West and advance a new historic theme, one as potent and fateful as Garrison’s. Perhaps a theme in homage to President Eisenhower’s great historic speech at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Calif., in 1956:

Geographical balance of power is essential to our form of free society. If you take the centralization shortcut every time something is to be done, you will perhaps sometimes get quick action. But there is no perhaps about the price you will pay for your impatience: the growth of a swollen, bureaucratic, monster government in Washington, in whose shadow our state and local governments will ultimately wither and die.

It perfectly reviews our history at the end of our passing era and presents a mantra for the rising American century. They knew how to write speeches in 1956.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.