In her Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan reminisces, drawing an analogy between George H. W. Bush’s speech at the Republican National Convention in 1988 and Kamala Harris speech in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention next week:
He defined modern conservatism: “An election that is about ideas and values is also about philosophy. And I have one. At the bright center is the individual. And radiating out from him or her is the family, the essential unit of closeness and of love. For it’s the family that communicates to our children—to the 21st century—our culture, our religious faith, our traditions and history. From the individual to the family to the community, and then on out to the town, the church and the school, and, still echoing out, to the county, the state, and the nation—each doing only what it does well, and no more. And I believe that power must always be kept close to the individual—close to the hands that raise the family and run the home.”
He then defined what kind of conservative he was, one who saw the centrality of the individual existing within the connectedness of communities: “I am guided by certain traditions. One, is that there is a God and he is good, and his love, while free, has a self imposed cost: We must be good to one another. . . . And there is another tradition. And that’s the idea of community—a beautiful word with a big meaning.”
Democrats, he felt, had an odd view of it. “They see community as a limited cluster of interest groups, locked in odd conformity. . . . But that’s not what community means—not to me. For we’re a nation of community, of thousands and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary and unique. This is America: the Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans, the Order of Ahepa, the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall, the Bible study group, Lulac”—the League of United Latin American Citizens—“Holy Name—a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”
I wonder: Would Ms. Harris ever define modern liberalism? Would she want to define her own?
I don’t think the analogy is as strong as Ms. Noonan seems to think. I don’t believe that speeches, particularly long speeches, are an effective method of communication in the modern post-literate world. You can’t appeal to reason or to, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “the better angels of our nature”.
