What Time Is It? Time to Govern.

Judy Woodruff looked like someone had just shot her dog. The first night of the Republican National Convention was concluding after a barnburner by Teamsters president Sean O’Brien and the reporter on the convention floor tossed the coverage back to the studio.

“There are two kinds of people in politics,” enthused the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter, quoting the late Mark Shields, “those who try to get converts and those who seek to push people out as heretics. And at least the message here tonight, we’ll see whether or not that extends, is exactly that, which is that we want to bring the folks who were maybe against us” into the coalition.

Amna Nawaz, anchoring the coverage, asked, “Judy, that permission structure that seems to be erected here tonight, I mean you’ve been out as part of your ‘Crossroads’ reporting, talking to Republicans of all stripes. Is this the kind of stuff that resonates with them?”

“Well, with some of them, for sure,” replied Woodruff, more sadly than anyone has ever said anything on live television. “I have to say, there is a very deliberate set of messages coming out tonight that don’t necessarily reflect the divisions that I’ve seen across the country.”

Her disappointment holds a vital lesson. Of course, the problem here was not that a political party sought to unite rather than divide Americans, emphasizing shared values over polarizing disagreements. Indeed, there are few things a senior PBS political analyst loves more. No, the problem was that after 35 years in which the Republican candidate for president has reached 51% of the popular vote exactly zero times, conservatives might actually adopt a strategy with the potential to assemble a dominant coalition.

In the aftermath of the awful attempt on Donald Trump’s life, buttressed by his selection of Senator JD Vance as his running mate, the prospect appears suddenly plausible. Conventional political analysis has questioned what Vance brings to the ticket—does he really get Trump from 269 electoral votes to 271?  But this is the wrong question. If Vance succeeds in completing the GOP’s transition to a working-class party that combines the social conservatism of most voters with an economic agenda responsive to their concerns, and if Trump genuinely pivots to the message of national unity he has gestured toward in recent days, the question will become whether they can achieve a landslide.

Most political actors seem to understand their incentives as being always to escalate. When the other side does something that infuriates your side, the strong response is to fight fire with fire, or perhaps go even further and do something more boldly unprecedented that the other side will find even more infuriating. Conciliation and compromise, by contrast, are considered weak, and an invitation to the other side to push even further. But as I discussed with Batya Ungar-Sargon on a recent episode of the American Compass podcast, most people defy simple political categorization, they dislike polarization and want compromise, and they tend to distrust both political parties and think leaders on both sides have lost their minds. In this context, refusing to escalate and instead responding with statesmanship—taking the high road—can be the dominant strategy.

Conservatives should seize that opportunity—pounce on it, even. But our coalition-building muscles are badly atrophied. The compelling vision remains to be formed and communicated. An outrage-industrial-complex whose only outputs are angry rhetoric, an off-putting aesthetic, and unpopular action must be defied. In short, most of the work remains.

* * *

As I said last week in my remarks at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, American conservatism is at a critical moment of transition. The dogmatic market fundamentalism, naïve globalism, and reckless international adventurism that infected the right-of-center in recent decades has lost its credibility. The keepers of that orthodoxy are fading quickly from relevance, unable to defend it and less and less inclined to even try.

Every expired political movement has its Japanese soldiers holding out on remote islands, unaware the war has ended or sworn to fight on regardless. We have the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. It’s a challenge finding the energy even to comment anymore. What is there to say when former Speaker Paul Ryan publishes an op-ed there headlined “Crypto Could Stave off a U.S. Debt Crisis.”

But now comes the same great challenge brought on by success in so many contexts: The start-up with a breakthrough innovation, that must now figure out how to produce at scale and go from disruptor to market leader. The political campaign that triumphs in its party’s primary, and must now win a majority of the broader electorate. The revolutionaries who free a nation, but then have to lead.

We can see the coalition of working- and middle-class Americans of all colors and creeds who share our core, conservative commitments. We have overtaken the failed establishment and earned the right to make our pitch to the nation. But we have yet to settle on a vision that can translate this potential into political success and a durable governing majority.

What should we say, and do? In a sense, I am asking you to imagine what will be, unburdened by what has been.

Let me start with a story about Ronald Reagan. Many are familiar with his famous quote: “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

Reagan delivered the line while making a policy announcement. Does anyone know what it was? Perhaps a tax cut, or the removal of some major regulation? No, Reagan was announcing “record amounts of assistance” to farmers, including policy on grain exports, drought assistance, and price-support loans. “America’s farmers should know that our commitment to helping them is unshakable,” he said. “And as long as I am in Washington, their concerns are going to be heard and acted upon.” So much for terrifying.

Governing is about solving problems and creating conditions for people to live dignified lives, raise families, and contribute to their communities. Certainly, this was Reagan’s view. We’ve all heard the phrase from his first inaugural, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But the context here, again, has been lost to time. He was not saying government as a concept—that government per se—is the problem. He was saying that the particular government we had at the time was the problem. It was “government by an elite group” that he rejected, contrasting it with the commendable “government for, by, and of the people.” He went on:

All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick.

I must quote one more passage from that inaugural address:

Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God. We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

Again, governing is about solving problems and, yes, helping people. Specifically, solving the problems most acute for the nation and its citizens, and those problems which they can least solve themselves.

To be clear, solving problems—helping people—does not mean giving them things, or declaring a better world by fiat. Those are the foolish mistakes our progressive friends make all too often. Conservatives bring to the task of governing the insight that what appears at first blush most helpful—say, providing a handout, or making a rule against an undesirable activity—may create the wrong incentives or have unintended consequences. Conservatives also recognize that those governing may themselves have the wrong information or incentives and fail to understand the problem or pursue a useful solution at all.

But none of that justifies the libertarian conceit that government’s only task is to “get out of the way,” which infected conservatism, supplanting Reagan’s prudential, positive, wildly popular approach with a desiccated do-nothing-ism.

* * *

The fusionist coalition that Reagan brought together unfortunately left market fundamentalists in control of economic and domestic policy, while conservatives were left to focus on so-called “social issues”—though that focus could come only in the form of vocal lamentation. The anti-communist hawks were given foreign policy and free rein to embark upon their adventures around the world.

We could spend hours discussing whether and why that coalition made sense in the context of the Cold War. But 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is obviously long past its expiration date. Thankfully, it has now been poured down the drain.

But for conservatives to not only win our internal battles, not only “own the libs,” but also build a durable governing majority, we have to replace that market fundamentalism with a new, conservative economic narrative: one that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.

I’m not sure that’s happening. Instead, many on the Right seem to have learned precisely the wrong lesson from Donald Trump’s success, believing that the old playbook will work just fine, so long as it comes with a sharper cultural edge and more vulgarity. The political strategy seems to be that so many people are so fed up with the Left that simply being not-the-left can get the job done, regardless of what comes attached.

This is a dangerous course. No question, conservatives have an extraordinary opportunity in this period of political chaos. But let’s be clear-eyed: so do progressives. Democrats could find themselves with the upper hand if they just dispensed with their most outlandish cultural commitments—and, I guess it no longer goes without saying, if they topped their ticket with someone capable of handling jetlag. Republicans could take firm control if they would just indicate some interest in addressing the economic concerns of common citizens.

Yet, neither side has taken seriously the central obligation of leaders in a democratic republic, to faithfully govern on behalf of the people. Instead, both have seemed hell-bent on waging niche intra-elite war on each other, hoping they can amass just enough votes to claim power and then impose their own preferences, even when those align poorly with the common citizen’s.

When Barack Obama or Joe Biden has done this, conservatives protest loudly and mock the resulting political fallout as power swings back to Republicans—who have proceeded to do the same thing. This is how you get a 50/50 nation, repeated wave elections, vicious political combat and collapsing faith in our institutions, and national decay.

Gaining productive power requires focusing on people’s problems and explaining how you are going to solve them, not pounding the table for “Christian Nationalism” or a “second American Revolution.” And importantly, it then requires using the power gained to in fact solve the problems—not to pivot quickly to some far-reaching ideological agenda that has nowhere near the support required for its success.

We need to provide a compelling definition of human flourishing as our ends, aligned with people’s priorities. The typical American has an attachment to place, a focus on family, a commitment to making things, and would accept economic trade-offs in their pursuit. National conservatism has enriched this conception with its focus on the centrality of the nation itself. Only by recognizing that citizens share in common their nation, that it brings with it solidarity amongst ourselves, and that it gives us something greater than ourselves to contribute to, can we make the case for governing on behalf of the common good.

And then, yes, we need to gain comfort with governing as the means by which we help achieve our common ends. Americans don’t dislike government. Indeed, they have generally positive views of their local and state governments. The federal government is another matter—but we need to explain how we can make it work better, not how we can burn it down.

Americans don’t necessarily want less government, they want different government. By more than 3-to-1, they say “government should do more of some things, less of others” rather than “government should do much less.” Even among Republicans the margin is nearly 2-to-1.

Likewise, most Americans—including most Republicans—believe there can be a significant role for government in improving people’s lives. Not even one-third of Republicans agree with a rule of thumb that “government policies and programs will be unhelpful.” And in no major area of spending at any level do even one-quarter of Republicans say they want to see government doing less.

* * *

Here are three themes that conservatives should focus on.

First, worker power is good. It is inherently moral. And it is vital to a prosperous economy. At the start of the conference, Senator Hawley spoke about embracing private-sector unions. I have my concerns with how those unions run today, as progressive activist groups more so than representatives of worker interests. The overwhelming majority of workers feel the same way—they want representation that focuses only on workplace issues, not national politics.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for conservatives, because the idea of worker power and a strong labor movement is something that conservatives should love. We should want labor to be able to meet capital on a level playing field, so that workers share fully in the prosperity they create, instead of using taxing and redistribution to address a fundamentally unequal and unfair economy.

The problems of globalization and unchecked immigration are also, in significant part, problems of worker power. The dogma of market fundamentalism holds that boosting profits by undercutting workers leads to prosperity. As Heritage Foundation economist Steve Moore put it to me in a debate last year: “Cheap labor leads to a booming stock market? That benefits everyone.”

No, it doesn’t. What benefits everyone is an economy in which the path to profit runs through offering good jobs. That’s the only way Adam Smith’s invisible hand can ensure that people pursuing their private interest will advance the common good as well.

You want to make a buck in America? Make it with American workers.

Second—and this point is in many ways a corollary of the first—we must have the courage to distinguish between value creation and value destruction: between growing the pie and eating it.

We must be a movement that celebrates success and excellence and entrepreneurship. But if we are willing to define human flourishing in substantive terms, as decent lives built contributing to strong communities and raising healthy families, then we must also be willing to use public policy in support of that vision rather than professing blind faith in the market to deliver it.

We should be delighted if someone becomes wealthy building a new business that creates family-supporting jobs and provides valuable goods and services. That’s growing the pie. We should have no tolerance for someone becoming wealthy buying that business, loading it with debt, cutting wages, squeezing suppliers, and then selling it off in parts, with the profit sent back to other already-wealthy people. That’s eating the pie.

Third, we need to make the economy work for families. As one participant in a recent American Compass focus group put it, “our economy doesn’t give you a break.” Market forces are not the family’s friend, and public policy plays an indispensable role in protecting the family’s foundations from relentless erosion by the market’s push for profit. Families are not “efficient.” We should not want them to be.

The American people are looking desperately for leaders who will address this: who will speak at once to the importance of family and child-rearing above all else, and also to the importance of checking the market’s influence. Progressives will not do that. Libertarians will not do that. Only conservatives can.

Americans are desperately eager to hear someone tell the truth about what has gone wrong and what is now required, and to ask them to be part of that project. They are enraged by inflation caused by reckless spending, but they will absolutely accept the costs associated with reshoring manufacturing and creating good American jobs. They have no interest in paying higher taxes to fund yet more reckless spending, or slashing entitlements to fund yet another tax cut. But ask what they think of a deal that would actually reduce the deficit, and they overwhelmingly believe it should include both tax increases and spending cuts—Republicans, too.

America has spent the past 30 years digging itself an extraordinary hole, and we will need real sacrifice from everyone to get back out. National conservatism, by not only acknowledging but also celebrating the concept of the nation and the ties that bind us together, provides a basis for asking such sacrifice on behalf of each other and something greater than ourselves.

We published a wonderful essay last week at American Compass from a man named Sergei Korol, “Stranger in a Strained Land.” Sergei was a Belarusian democracy activist after the fall of the Soviet Union who received political asylum in the United States in the 1990s, and he describes his experience watching neoliberalism undermine America’s greatest strengths, and his hope that “the extraordinary nation America had become when I first arrived can be its future as well.” He wrote:

We need to be more imaginative, more strategic, more ambitious. Being a good and great nation is an end unto itself; perhaps the one that elites, eager to be “citizens of the world,” most carelessly abandoned. It also gives purpose to the sacrifices that will be necessary if we are to recover economically, and distinguishes our trajectory from that of nations in Europe that appear content to slowly fade into economic, cultural, and demographic obscurity.

The power of a nation as more than a collection of selfish individuals, and of a conservatism that recognizes it as such, is that our common problems are ones we can understand and solve, if only we will ask that of ourselves.