The Republican Challenge – The Weekly Standard
George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:
Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.
Almost half a century later, notwithstanding many stumbles, errors, and reversals along the way, America had won the Cold War. The American people, under nine presidents of both parties, had pulled themselves together, met the challenge, and accepted the responsibilities of moral and political leadership.
This should be a source of American prideeven if in certain respects we staggered to our Cold War victory. No one could stand up in 1992 and say of the United States and our allies what Winston Churchill felt compelled to say in 1938: "that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: 'Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.'"
Nations have their historic tests. We passed at least one of ours. So too do political parties. Will the Republicans pass theirs?
Edmund Burke, the founder of the modern party system, described a political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." In foreign policy, the particular principle upon which Republicans agreed, for the entire Cold War and the period since, could be summarized as American global leadership. From nominee Thomas Dewey to nominee Mitt Romney, from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to President George W. Bush, from the Goldwater wing of the party to the Rockefeller wing, and allowing for many differences in emphasis and interpretation, Republicans agreed on the principle not of America first but of American leadership. Republicans embraced the obligation of America to accept "the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear."
Meanwhile, in domestic policy, Republicans, for all their differences, did share a broad agreement on respect for the constitutional order, limited government, free markets, and a free society under the rule of law. A commitment to this vague but not totally amorphous set of views, held of course by various leaders with differing shades of conviction and emphasis, has tied together the modern Republican party over the past three-quarters of a century.
And Republicans have also tended to unite on one other conviction: Character matters. This is a social doctrine, so to speakbut also one of relevance to the party itself. Republicans have generally tried to uphold certain standards of behavior. Republicans, after all, did not merely impeach Bill Clinton. It was Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and John Rhodes who in 1974 went to their fellow Republican, Richard Nixon, and told him he had to go.
In 2016, through a series of failures and flukes, thanks to the accidents of politics and the arts of demagoguery, the Republican party nominated as its presidential candidate a man of bad character who has no interest in American leadership in the world or limited government at home. In the general election, he eked out a victory over a weak Democratic nominee. He is now our presidenta Republican president.
This imposes on the Republican party a peculiar obligation: to guide him when possible, to check him when advisable, to rebuke and oppose him when necessary. And, of course, to support him when he does the right thing, as in the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But support of a president of one's own party is, as it were, natural. It's opposition that will be difficult.
Republicans need not act precipitously in looking for excuses to oppose the president. But they need to be prepared to do so. And they need to be aware of the kind of moral corruption and personal humiliation that comes from bending over too far backward to the obligation of opposing what needs to be opposed.
This obligation falls most obviously on Republican members of Congress. But it also applies to senior members of the president's own administration and to the Republican rank-and-file. Much of this guiding and checking and opposing can be done in private. But some of it will have to be public. And, judging from the president's first three weeks in office, some of it will have to come sooner rather than later.
Will there be tension between the peculiar GOP obligation of this time and place and the more normal activity of battling Democrats? Certainly. But a serious party can both struggle against adversaries and uphold its own standards. This latter challenge will be the more difficult of the two. But if Republicans do not rise to that challenge, the terrible words will be pronounced against them: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."
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The Republican Challenge - The Weekly Standard