William Kristol - chairman, Project for the Republican Future; former chief of staff to Secretary Bill Bennett and to Vice President Dan Quayle; written in the fields of political philosophy and American politics for journals such as the Chicago Law Review, Commentary, and others.

 Welcome to Washington, those of you who came from out of town.

We have a great new mayor here, Marion Barry. I guess that's probably why you're meeting in Virginia, come to think of it. I always liked Marion Barry in a certain sense. I always call him the "New Democratic Mayor of Washington." Before he became famous for other things, when he was mayor about eight years ago, he was being harassed by a Washington Post reporter for having misled him about some issue. The reporter said, "You didn't tell the truth." And Mayor Barry looked at him and said, "Son, in politics there are two kinds of truths, real truths and made-up truths." Which I've always thought was a useful guide to Washington and to politics in our nation's capital.

I was held up on the way here by a motorcade, I think it was the vice president's motorcade. They stop traffic and everything. He was going somewhere to pursue his important reinventing government initiative, I guess.

I heard a story about it the other day. I normally don't tell stories about vice presidents because it's kind of a sore point for those of us who have worked for Dan Quayle. He was so unfairly attacked and ridiculed. But Gore was doing his reinventing government thing. At some government agency he was interviewing the workers to see how they could become more effective, more efficient at what they do. He asked the first worker, "What do you do all day?"

And the bureaucrat said, "Nothing."

He went to the second bureaucrat and asked her, "Well, what do you do all day?"

And she said, "Nothing."

He turned to his staff aides and said, "We have a problem here."

The staff aide said, "Boy, it's really amazing."

He turned to a third worker, "What do you do all day?"

"Nothing."

And Gore said, "This is worse than we thought."

The staff aide said, "Yeah, we're going to have to do something about this."

Gore replied, "Yeah, too much duplication of responsibilities."

I think the fact that this joke is being told shows why the Clinton administration and the Democratic party have trouble convincing Americans that they're serious about reinventing government. And why Americans are dubious that you can reinvent government, that you don't just have to cut it and re-limit it.

Let me just take a few minutes to discuss the current political situation, the current strategic situation. I would say three things -- a word about 1994, a word about 1995, and a word about 1996. All of them are contrary to the conventional wisdom.

On 1994, it was a realigning election in American history. You never know for sure until a couple of elections later. But 1994 is likely to prove to be a realigning election, of a sort like the elections in the early '30s which laid the groundwork for the New Deal and for sixty years of Democratic party dominance, of liberal dominance, of American politics.

In 1994 the Democratic party, for the first time in 62 years, lost its status as the majority party in the United States. Despite Nixon's victories, despite Reagan's victories, Democrats were clearly the majority party throughout the '80s, into the '90s.

On November 7th, 1994, Democrats controlled two-thirds of the state legislative chambers in this country. Now Republicans have a slight majority of the state legislative chambers. Republicans have thirty governorships. Seventy-one percent of the American people live in states with Republican governors. Republicans have, of course, narrow majorities in both houses of Congress.

If you look at the '94 returns, it's really a once in a lifetime election. If you compare '90 to '94, the Democrats lost a million votes in four years, a million fewer Democratic voters. Republicans picked up 9 million votes, went from 27 to 36 million. It was the largest increase from one off-year election to another in American history. So it was a huge election shift. And all this talk is not true, about how it was just a swing of the pendulum, that people were unhappy with Clinton, that they didn't like the health care plan, that it was just a reaction. It was a very deep judgment on liberalism of the Democratic party, on the health care plan as it came to embody a certain view of government and its role in the country.

For the first time in fifteen years, voters had a chance to see unified government in Washington. Democratic president, Democratic Congress. It had been muddled since 1980: Republican president, Democratic House, then a Republican president, Democratic Congress after '86. So it was very hard for voters to get a clear fix on who was responsible for what and what each party stood for.

Bush, of course, made this more difficult with the budget deal and all the bipartisan legislation of the Bush term. It was very hard for voters to sort out which party really stood for what. That's the reason for all those inconclusive elections in the late '80s and early '90s, with very little swing between the parties, with races driven by personalities.

In '94, you had an old-fashioned 1930s, 1890s type partisan election. All the talk about anti-incumbency, you know -- "Throw out the bums of both parties" -- is not at all true. Every Republican incumbent, governor, senator and congressman won. It was a very big partisan swing, the biggest in sixty years. All this doesn't mean we have any guarantee that we'll have a Republican majority for the next generation. It doesn't mean we have a guarantee that conservatism will be in the ascendancy or that conservatives will govern successfully. There are huge challenges ahead on that front. But it does mean, I think, that the opportunity is there in a way it wasn't, even in 1980, where Reagan's victory, if truth be told, was more of a reaction against Carter. And Reagan did get only 50 percent of the vote. Even though he then built that to 60 percent in '84, we never came close to taking the House.

And we lost momentum by about '83, '84, really, and then lost the Senate in '86. This now is really a different circumstance. The depth of disbelief in liberalism and in government is much deeper today than it was even at the beginning of the Reagan revolution. And that, at least, provides an opportunity for those of us who would want to re-limit government and restore power to states and localities and families and citizens.

I think Reagan never really had a comparable chance. He also had to worry about defeating the Soviet Union, which ended up taking first place on his list of things to do, which was perfectly reasonable. But it meant that the domestic agenda had to be, to some degree, put on the back burner, compromised after 1981.

So this really is a new era in American politics.

Now, what that means is that all the old rules don't apply any more. In Washington over the first five months of '95, pundits and journalists have been continually surprised that the old rules don't apply. They don't understand it really is a new era. So they keep expecting that the Republicans will have to moderate their agenda, that the interest groups will defeat the attempt to cut government and that Gingrich will lose control of the House Republicans because we don't have strong parties any more, or strong Speakers. All these rules were true for most of the '60s and '70s and '80s, but they may just not be true any more.

It's a new era, and new eras have new political rules. An awful lot of pundits sat around in 1933 saying Roosevelt could never possibly do what he hoped to do, because that had been tried before in the teens and the twenties and had gone nowhere.

But sometimes when you get a breakthrough election, things can change very, very fast. I do think the odds are greater now that we will have more radical change than people think, not less.

The lesson of the first hundred days of the Republican Congress was that the Republicans radicalized -- how shall I put it -- they were bolder than they promised to be. Not less bold. The House passed broader welfare reform than they campaigned on in the Contract; they passed broader legal reform; they passed broader regulatory reform than was in the Contract. If anything, the momentum was picking up, not slowing down. Even in the Senate, despite the obvious obstacles there, and they're real and they're generational.

Half of all House Republicans today were elected in '92 or '94. Half of all Senate Republicans were elected in 1980 or before. So there's a huge gap between the two bodies. It's not just that Bob Dole is less of a revolutionary leader than Newt Gingrich. There's very, very different composition of the Republican parties in those two bodies. Still, the momentum is such that the Senate is going to do more than people expect. It won't do everything, but it'll take some first steps, like on tort reform, where they did actually pass tort reform. They beat the trial lawyers for the first time in twenty years. That's not insignificant. They can then pick up seats and do more in '96 and in '97.

So my prediction on '95 is that the Senate will end up doing more than people think. They will pass a budget that has pretty bold changes in it; they will pass tax cuts -- not quite as much as the House passed but they will be real tax cuts. They will pass welfare reform, I think. And I think Clinton will end up signing all three in some form or another. My sense is that when you get in one of the revolutionary eras or realigning eras, the momentum tends to continue or even to build.

Look at how much the debate has changed in the last six months. Something like the flat tax seemed like just a pipe dream a year ago. It is now likely to be on the agenda for the Republican presidential candidate in '96, some version of it, at least.

 Affirmative action seemed totally entrenched and unchallengeable six to twelve months ago except by a few conservative legal scholars and think tanks. It is now under pretty serious political attack. Again, these things won't happen overnight. There'll be huge obstacles. There'll be a lot of nervousness and backing off by politicians -- that's what politicians do for a living. They get nervous when they see polls and try to back off. But I think the momentum is there that will tend to carry them through to bolder rather than less bold changes.

The big story the first hundred days was the school lunch fight. It's been totally misinterpreted in Washington. Republicans kind of mishandled the whole thing, obviously. They didn't make a very good case for what they were doing. It got skillfully, though deceptively, labeled by the Democrats -- "draconian cuts in school lunches." Little kids will be hungry and all that. Republicans got very nervous and worried for about a week; it looked like we were going to be in a situation very much like the situation we all remember -- we remember in particular -- in the early mid-'80s, when liberals made this kind of assault on Republicans, who retreated. Not all of them, but enough of them retreated to make it impossible to go forward.

The big story on school lunch this year was that the liberals fired all their heavy artillery, and at the end of the day, they failed. The Republicans went ahead and block-granted the school lunch program, they went ahead and passed welfare reform the next week, they went ahead and passed tax and spending cuts the next week, and then the Republican congressmen and senators went home for the recess. They have just returned, and I've talked to a lot of them. What they heard from voters, over and over, was, "You know, we may not agree with everything you've done, but," the voters would say, "but keep on going. Don't back off."

Republican senators and congressmen, even moderate Republican senators and congressmen, now believe there is greater political risk in being timid than being bold. They do not want to go to the voters a year from now and be accused of lapsing back into politics as usual or business as usual.

That political dynamic will tend to ensure that they continue to push ahead with spending reductions or at least reductions in the rate of growth of spending, and with tax cuts and pretty bold reforms. They are more scared now of not doing enough than of doing too much. They know it would kill the new Republican majority's chances to go to the voters in '96 and say, "We deserve re-election," if the voters say, "We put you in for the first time in forty years, and you didn't make a difference. You didn't change anything."

Even if the voters are nervous about some of these changes, which they are, if the real changes are made, they'll tend to give the Republicans the benefit of the doubt. They'll say, "Well, at least you tried to change the status quo, which we were unhappy with." So as long as that dynamic holds I think the momentum is for more change, not less. We'll see.

There'll be huge fights on the budget, on Medicare, but I think Medicare will be like school lunch. There'll be a huge amount of artillery fired, a huge amount of nervousness among Republicans, and at the end of the day the Republicans will come out of the foxholes, look around and decide it's not quite as dangerous as they thought. So they'll just go ahead and reduce the rate of growth for Medicare from 10 percent to seven percent and begin reforms, pretty serious reforms. Medical savings accounts, opt-outs, and the like. They'll decide, "Gee, this isn't quite as dangerous as we've been told for 25 years."

And I think it isn't. That is, again, the story of '94. The Democrats played all the cards that worked for them in the '80s, including Social Security, which did do damage to the Republicans in '82 and '86, but it didn't really work in '94.

Somehow the public's mood and opinion has changed sufficiently that they are now skeptical of all these government programs.

They're open, finally, to conservative arguments that even the programs you like and that you benefit from do need to be cut back, that you need to get government spending under control, that government's too big, too intrusive and the like.

One final point on that. Oklahoma, incidentally, proves this to me. The left clearly thought -- Clinton thought, after the Oklahoma crime, after the bombing, that he could exploit it politically, that he could tie these lunatics who blew up the building to anti-government rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and of conservatives.

Again the big story is not that he tried and not that the press echoed that, but that he's failed. No one I've talked to out in the country, and not just conservatives but business groups there, believes that line. That argument has no penetration at all and no credibility. Ten years ago it might have. Ten years ago a lot of people might have gotten nervous. Ten years ago a Republican Congress might have said, "Gee, we can't gut government so much because it makes us look as if we're a part of this anti-government feeling that leads to murdering 165 people." No one said that this week on the Hill. There's a lesson there on just how much things have changed over the last ten to fifteen years.

The 1996 presidential race is on everyone's mind. I have no ability to predict these things any more than anyone else does. A lot depends on whether you think the party has changed a lot and whether or not the political dynamics have changed. If they have not changed that much, then Bob Dole will be the nominee.

There's just no question that Republicans over the last 25 years have always nominated the front runner. We nominated Bush in '88, we nominated Reagan in '80, we nominated Nixon in '68. Without exception, we've always nominated someone who's run for president before, as those three examples suggest. Dole fits both those categories. And you'd have to say that this is a very hierarchical party. Dole's the leader of the party. He'll probably do okay in getting the major Contract items through the Senate. And he'll probably be the nominee, just as Bush was in '88. That may be true. That's certainly the Washington conventional wisdom.

I don't quite believe it. I couldn't really prove that it's wrong or even make a very good argument for why it's wrong. It's just something, somehow, deep down in my gut. I don't believe that after going through the '94 Republican sweep, primary voters are going to be real thrilled about nominating Bob Dole to be president in '96. I don't say that out of any animus against Dole, but I just think he's a different kind of Republican than the Republicanism of '94.

He will try to present himself, obviously, as the old pro who can shepherd the new agenda of '94 through the Congress and who, as President, could shepherd it to fruition. That he could work with Gingrich, etc. There's some truth to this, that he could calm things down a little bit, that he could reassure people, but at the end of the day he understands the message of '94. That will be his task, to convince Republican primary voters of that, and he might succeed. I'm a little dubious, but he might.

Otherwise, I think the main alternatives to Dole are two. One is Phil Gramm, who has a shot, I think, at becoming the conservative candidate, uniting the Reagan coalition behind him, in effect turning this into a replay of 1980, a Reagan/Bush, Gramm/Dole parallel, conservative versus moderate, insurgent versus establishment. If Gramm can unite the Reagan coalition, again he's got a real shot. He's a very capable politician and a very smart man. And I personally think he'd be a good president.

I think so far he hasn't quite taken off, but it's early, and he might. It's just very hard to tell the dynamic of these races. He'll pick a big fight with Dole in the Senate, or try to, where he'll be insisting on tax cuts as well as spending cuts. I think Dole will try to blur the lines by proposing next week some tax cuts, modifying Domenici's budget.

Dole will try hard to prevent Gramm from getting much traction on him, just as Bush did in '88 with Kemp and du Pont and Robertson. And Bush succeeded in '88. Kemp and du Pont and Robertson were never really able to convince most Republican primary voters why they would be that different from Bush who, after all, was Reagan's vice president.

Dole will try to do the same sort of thing in '95 and '96. Either Dole will succeed or he won't. If he doesn't, I think Gramm could beat him. Or, if Dole collapses, it could be Wilson or Alexander in a showdown.

The other alternative, which shouldn't be entirely discounted, is that Dole falters a bit, Gramm does not coalesce conservatives entirely behind him for whatever reason and doesn't really take off. Then I think there'll be a big Gingrich boomlet.

I don't know what you all find around the country. When I talk to Republicans around the country, they respect Dole, many of them admire Gramm, but they love Gingrich. And that matters in primaries. If Newt gets the budget through the House and if he's cheerfully moving everything forward but it all bogs down in the Senate and if Gramm and Dole are engaged in some complicated arguments no one can quite understand, it seems to me, at that point, some people are going to look around and say, "Well, hey, what we want is the '94 election again. We know who led the party in the '94 election. It was Gingrich. He's done a great job as Speaker of the House, so why shouldn't he lead the party in the '96 election?" This seems unlikely now, but I think it might seem less unlikely three months from now.

I'm not particularly advocating this, incidentally. I'm not even sure it's a good idea. But I think, as an analytical matter, one shouldn't discount it. It will be an interesting campaign.

I think Clinton's likely to be the Democratic nominee, though I think it is not as certain as people think. Whitewater will obviously perk up in the next couple of weeks; we'll just have to see how that goes. I don't know anything about it, but it could be pretty bad for Clinton. It's hard to depose an incumbent president, so presumably he'll be the nominee.

 I think Republicans will win the presidential election if the Republican party doesn't split and if there's no serious third party. I base that on an extremely simple-minded point, with which I'll appropriately conclude. Simple-minded points are always the best, often the truest. My point is, Clinton got 43 percent of the vote in '92.

I recommend you do an experiment which I do with audiences. This is not a good audience to do it in; it's too conservative an audience. But when you speak to normal audiences, if I can put it that way, and just ask whether anyone in the audience who did not vote for Clinton in '92 is going to vote for him in '96.

This isn't a smart-aleck question. It's an honest question. No one raises his hand. Then I ask, "Well, do you know anyone, neighbors, friends, relatives, who didn't vote for Clinton in '92," -- which means they voted for Perot or Bush in '92, -- "do you know anyone like that who is going to vote for Clinton in '96?"

I can never find anyone. And that suggests to me that Clinton basically tops out at his '92 vote, which is 43 percent. He has not convinced any Perot voters, certainly not any Bush voters, that they should vote for him in '96.

A lot could change over the next year and a half. There could be a horrible Republican primary season, very divisive and bitter. People could become unhappy and then take a fresh look at Clinton. But most elections with incumbents are referenda on the incumbent, as Bush found in '92. If 57 percent, let's say, of the American people don't want to vote to re-elect Clinton, they're probably not going to. It would take a lot to push them to do so, I think.

If Republicans can avoid a three-way race and a horribly bitter primary fight and convention, and if they avoid an awful platform fight, they should win in '96. But those are a couple of big ifs. A lot does depend on who the nominee is.

I guess I don't buy this whole Clinton resurgence argument because I just cannot see Bill Clinton getting 51 percent of the vote in '96.

A three-way race is another story, and that remains a big threat for the Republicans. The important thing is to step back from the day-to-day stuff and ask whether it really is a new era or not. Do all the rules of the old era apply?

I think we'll see, over the next few months, the debate continue to move as fast as it has moved. I think the legislative agenda will move faster in Congress than people expect. The debate probably will move faster than is expected in the country and at the state and local levels, incidentally.

Things are moving faster right now than one could have expected. A bunch of Republican governors who ran as conventional, moderately conservative Republicans are now governing more boldly than they campaigned. That's the opposite of what's been the case for thirty years. For thirty years everyone campaigned as bold conservatives and then governed as mushy moderates. Governors Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania, who is totally conventional, a nice guy, but a moderate Republican, Pataki in New York, Whitman in New Jersey, are actually governing pretty boldly. Ridge is pushing school choice, Whitman's cut taxes, Pataki's cutting taxes and cutting real spending year-to-year in New York, of all places.

That shows the kind of underlying dynamic that's at work. It's not that these people have suddenly become converted in a deep way to conservative principles. It's just that, when a dynamic like this is going, politicians go along with it. That's the thing to keep an eye on over the next few months and few years.

Does that underlying dynamic keep going in such a way that moderate and pragmatic Republicans find themselves taking stances that two years ago would only have been taken by fierce conservative ideologues? I think that's really an interesting question.