Me and politics in 2009

When Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964 by scaring the American people about war, perhaps nuclear war, Russell Kirk took leave of politics for the better part of a year, largely by traveling in Europe and finishing a couple of books, fiction and nonfiction. (It is absurd in retrospect that Goldwater, a warrior who loved peace, would be less safe as president than Johnson, a political animal who feared war would upset his ambitions.) Kirk saw that the country had made a major misjudgment but it would take several years before the law of unintended consequences forced the pendulum back to the right. In the meanwhile, the conservative mission is never primarily about politics but about culture. It is, simply put, more important that my daughter is reading The Lord of the Rings, and for that matter, that Tolkien is read, than whatever Congress is cooking to save incumbants and donors.

Gore Vidal once said that he had quit voting after 1964 when he voted for the "peace candidate," Lyndon Johnson. So much for elections and expectations. There has not been a Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt who did not bitterly disappoint the millennialists of our country.

Having said this, I have plenty that I might say about politics in 2009, but it seems my more important mission is to teach the Permanent Things to the one person I know is going to respond spiritedly, that is, my daughter, rather than preach to cyberspace about how the Obama administration is printing money by the trillions of dollars and giving it to the bankers, financiers, and executives who miscalculated billions of dollars of their shareholders' and bondholders' money. Walker Percy would write much better than I about 80,000 unionized automobile workers who will be building only about 80,000 green vehicles in 2010 for purchase by the only entity that would buy them, the federal government, while they engage in numerous activities of self-help and self-improvement in order to qualify for their pensions at 55, when they can retire to organic farms, burn peat for fuel, and get larger pensions if they can prove their vegetarianism. This is funnier than what actually happened to the government-run motor company in Ceausescu's Romania.

I read Real Clear Politics, Instapundit, and Pajamas Media, and the news is mostly bad. Michael Barone has a nice piece today saying that Republicans- and I would say conservatives- don't need to move to the incoherent center as they need to persuade the center to come to them. William F. Buckley, and for that matter, Kirk, would certainly agree. I'll start with history, a tale of adventure, aesthetics, and moral imagination. I'll start with my daughter and her recent ticket to Middle Earth.