It Should Be Closer

Seen from The Long View, conservatives should be doing better.

Despite the fact that we’re now 38 years from Nixon’s election, there is still life in the old Thesis yet.

The reason? Modern medicine.

Think about it. The Age of Jefferson lasted 28 years. The Age of Jackson lasted 32 years. That of Lincoln lasted 36. The same for the eras of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Nixon’s era has been going for 38 years, yet I’m telling you his Thesis is still compelling. Why?

Medicine. Because we’re aging more slowly, because there are still tens of millions of us who remember Vietnam, still active, still seeing everything through that prism. It’s as though voters in the Great Depression were still fighting the Spanish-American War.

The assumptions of those who believe the Thesis will be exceedingly
hard to dislodge. I tried arguing politics recently with a relative
from that era, and there is no way he’ll budge. His knees will always
jerk to the conflation of Islam with Hitler, turning any complaint over
tactics into Neville Chamberlain. These are the habits of a lifetime. (Chamberlain, who tried to appease Hitler in the 1930s, was nevertheless a key bogeyman of the Nixon Thesis.)

In an earlier era, my relative would be dead. At minimum, he’d be
drooling in a home, or rocking on a porch. But he’s not. We went to
Ikea with him, a huge store, and he out-shopped us. We were ready to
head back to the car, he still wanted to look at stuff.

Because there are so many people around today who are active, vital,
but whose politics were defined by the Nixon Thesis, the next few
elections will be closer than they should be. Ignore the polls which
show Democrats with a 10-15 point lead. As we saw in San Diego last week, the knees still jerk.  Amazingly, they will continue to jerk, for years to come.

Don’t worry about it. Concentrate on the young. Create meaning for
voters 40 and under, a Myth and Values that speak to our time, and
long-term victory is assured.

Remember. Today’s 40 year olds were born in 1966. They don’t remember Vietnam. Today’s 30 year olds barely remember Jimmy Carter. My daughter registered to vote recently. She was born in1988. The first President she remembers was Clinton.

Time moves on. Move with it. Don’t fight the old wars, and you’ll eventually win the new ones.