Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (81 page)

4. THE END OF THE REAGAN MAJORITY

Lee Atwater
: The fullest biography of Atwater is John Brady,
Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

“hooked up to jumper cables”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Fierce GOP Partisan Harvey Lee Atwater,”
New York Times
, November 18, 1988.

Atwater knew exactly
: Atwater spoke very candidly at the Harvard Institute of Politics Election Conference. See also David Runkle, ed.,
Campaign for President: The Manager’s Look at ’88
(Dover, MA: Auburn House, 1989), pp. 33–34.

“Guess what? They would have”
: Runkle, ed.,
Campaign for President,
p. 112.

But in an interview shortly before his death
: “Gravely Ill, Atwater Offers Apology,”
New York Times
, January 12, 1991, original interview from
Life,
February 1991.

Bush’s approval rating hit an astonishing:
“Presidential Approval Ratings,” Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx
.

His reasoning was explained
: Charles Pope, “Cheney Changed His View on Iraq,”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, September 28, 2004.

After his 1991 highs:
“Presidential Approval Ratings,” Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx
.

“Read my lips”
: No new taxes: George H. W. Bush, speech in acceptance of the Republican nomination for president, August 18, 1988.

The result on October 5, 1990, was a humiliation
: David Rosenbaum, “Budget Plan Fails First House Test by 254–179,”
New York Times
, October 5, 1990.

Democrats, on the other hand
: See final roll call votes on the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1990/roll475.xml
.

The elder Bush
: Beth Marlowe and Chris Cillizza, “George H. W. Bush Backs Romney, Criticizes Gingrich,”
Washington Post
, December 22, 2011.

“It is a philosophy of progressive moderation”
: Prescott Bush, Lincoln Day speech, 1950s.

Clinton’s policy balance
: From a Clinton 1992 campaign speech.

“was not one thing or another”
: Sean Wilentz,
The Age of Reagan
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 325–26.

“neither a set of public positions nor a psychological dysfunction”
: Ibid., 326.

“A disturbing trend”
: Ross Perot,
Not for Sale at Any Price: How We Can Save America for Our Children
(New York: Hyperion, 1993), p. 75.

A Gallup poll in early June 1992
: “U.S. Presidential Election Center,” Gallup poll from June 11, 1992,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154559/us-presidential-election-center.aspx
.

“The people are concerned”
: “ ‘Honored to Accept’: Excerpts from Perot’s News Conference,”
New York Times
, October 2, 1992.

Bush’s 37.4 percent:
“Federal Elections 92: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives,” Federal Election Commission, June 1993,
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe1992/federalelections92.pdf
.

Exit polls showed that if Perot had not
: Steven A. Holmes, “The 1992 Elections: Disappointment—News Analysis: An Eccentric but No Joke; Perot’s Strong Showing Raises Questions on What Might Have Been, and What Might Be,”
New York Times,
November 5, 1992.

“Not only did he epitomize”
: Joshua Freeman,
American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home
(New York: Penguin Books, 2012), p. 431.

John Bricker, his running mate
: William Chafe,
The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 93.

“Clinton faced a well-funded conservative effort”
: Freeman,
American Empire,
p. 431.

“I believe this program”
: Quote from the
Congressional Record,
April 6, 2000.

“Clearly this is a job killer”
: CNN interview with Dick Armey, August 2, 1993.

They fit the Napoleonic
: Joshua Green, “Karl Rove in a Corner,”
Atlantic,
November, 2004.

Peter Mandelson, one of the central architects
: Michael White, “Peter Mandelson Has not Lost the Knack of Infuriating His Enemies,”
Guardian
, January 26, 2012.

“I hope you’re all aware we’re Eisenhower Republicans here”
: Freeman,
American Empire,
p. 420.

While Kristol nodded to various policy objections
: See William Kristol’s memorandum to Republican leaders, “A Serious Threat to the Republican Party,” December 2, 1993.

As the
Los Angeles Times
:
Tom Petruno, “Thrills, Chills: The ‘Real Economy’ Enters the Center Ring,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 1, 1995.

The 1994 Republican takeover
: Adam Clymer, “G.O.P. Celebrates Its Sweep to Power; Clinton Vows to Find Common Ground,”
New York Times
, November 9, 1994.

Especially alarming for Democrats
: Richard Morin, “The Forgotten Majority,”
Washington Post
, May 29, 2000.

When Obama’s top political adviser David Axelrod
: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, “Under Fire, President Obama Shifts Strategy,”
Politico
, September 1, 2009.

In what has become a hallowed formulation
: Richard Reeves, “Thou Shalt Not Attack Other Republicans . . . Except, Maybe, in ’76,”
New York
, March 10, 1975.

“Government is the enemy”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Bailing Out the Capitalists,”
RealClearPolitics
, March 18, 2008.

5. THE GINGRICH REVOLUTION AND CONSERVATISM’S SECOND CHANCE

As Clinton explained
: Bill Clinton,
My Life
(New York: Knopf, 2004), p. 660.

He’d be helped
: Ibid., p. 632.

“I think we all agree”
: President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, January 24, 1995.

On November 10
: Clinton,
My Life,
p. 681.

After a fruitless
: Ibid., 682.

“We made a mistake”
: Ibid., p. 694.

Representative David Funderburk:
See “Congressional Record Proceedings, Debates of the U.S. Congress,” from November 20, 1995,
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1995/11/20/house-section/article/H13348-2
.

“The balanced budget”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “For Many Republicans, A Balanced Budget Isn’t—And Never Was—The Real Goal,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, January 10, 1996.

“I chose to bomb”
: “McVeigh’s April 26 Letter to Fox News,” Fox News, April 26, 2001,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/04/26/mcveigh-apr-26-letter-to-fox-news.html
.

He urged Americans
: Doyle McManus, “Clinton Calls for Purge of ‘Dark Forces,’ ”
Los Angeles Times
, April 24, 1995.

“It was the nation’s”
: Michael Waldman,
POTUS Speaks: Finding the Words That Defined the Clinton Presidency
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 145.

And in honoring the dead
: Bill Clinton, Address in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 23, 1995,
http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/clinton/oklahomacity.html
.

“found his voice”
: Peter Keating, “Remembering Oklahoma City, and How Bill Clinton Saved His Presidency,”
New York,
April 19, 2010.

“The era of big government is over”
: President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, January 23, 1996.

“If Dole wins”
: “Commercials Target Economy, Gingrich,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 22, 1996.

“We’re the new liberals”
: Katharine Seelye, “In Visit to Arizona, Senator Emphasizes Goldwater Roots,”
New York Times
, February 25, 1996.

He’d say they were
: He used this phrase in public speeches and in conversations with the author.

For a useful and laudatory biography of Kemp, see Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes,
Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America
(New York: Sentinel, 2015).

“It is so very important”
: “Vice Presidential Debate in St. Petersburg, Florida,” CNN, 1996,
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/debates/transcripts/1009/index5.shtml
.

“My head says yes”
: John F. Harris,
The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House
(New York: Random House, 2005), p. 237, and especially chapters 22, pp. 30–35.

In the final Pew poll
: “Final Pew Center Survey—Clinton 52%, Dole 38%, Perot 9%,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, November 2, 1996.

“It is a reminder”
: Harris,
The Survivor,
pp. 252–53.

What the elections did
: John F. Cogan and David Brady, “The 1996 House Elections: Reaffirming the Conservative Trend,” Hoover Institution, March 1, 1997.

a sign of how starved Washington was
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Budget Deal Is a Political Classic,”
Washington Post
, August 1, 1997.

the agreement was reached
: Ibid.

Heritage’s analyst argued: Scott A. Hodge, “The 1997 Budget Agreement: The Return of Big Government,” Heritage Foundation, May 12, 1997.

Gingrich, however, was effusive
: John F. Harris and Eric Pianin, “Bipartisanship Reigns at Budget Signing,”
Washington Post
, August 6, 1997.

A Gallup poll in mid-January
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—Bill Clinton,” Gallup.

The United States Supreme Court had set it all in motion
: “Green Light for Jones,” CNN, May 27, 1997.

The details of the encounter
: David Brock, “His Cheatin’ Heart,”
American Spectator,
January 1994.

The reporting on Clinton’s personal life
: Neil A. Lewis, “Almost $2 Million Spent in Magazine’s Anti-Clinton Project, but on What?,” the
New York Times
, April 15, 1998.

It rejected the idea
:
Clinton v. Jones
(95-1853), 520 U.S. 681 (1997).

In a largely deserted White House
: David Finkel, “How It Came to This,”
Washington Post
, December 13, 1998.

The Jones case and the president’s affair
: Kenneth Starr, “The Starr Report,”
Washington Post
, 1998.

Unbeknownst to the president
: What came under the heading “Whitewater” referred to a development along Arkansas’s White River in which the Clintons invested, invited into the deal by James McDougal, a colorful figure described by John Harris as “a political and financial impresario.” The controversy over the deal went on for years, starting with a
New York Times
story early in the 1992 campaign, Jeff Gerth, “Clintons Joined S.&L. in an Ozark Real Estate Venture,”
New York Times,
March 8, 1992. Starr did not bring any charges in connection with Whitewater. For a good brief description of Whitewater, see Harris,
The Survivor
, pp. 102–9. For the definitive and painstakingly fair account of the entire Clinton impeachment controversy, see Ken Gormley,
The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr
(New York: Broadway Books, 2011).

The story of Starr’s
: Ibid.

the reaction of Clinton partisans
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Even Clinton Supporters Are Floored by Accusations,”
Washington Post
, January 23,1998.

Clinton’s famous reply
: Howard Kurtz, “Dick Morris, High on the Critical List,”
Washington Post
, February 3, 1999.

the statement that would never be forgotten
: Martin Kettle, “Clinton Takes Up Fight,”
Guardian,
January 26, 1998.

Clinton’s approval rating
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—Bill Clinton,” Gallup.

The conservatives’ frustration
: William J. Bennett,
The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals
(New York: Touchstone, 1998).

a popular collection of traditional stories teaching moral lessons
: William J. Bennett,
The Book of Virtues
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

“It is said that private character”
: Bennett,
The Death of Outrage,
pp. 8–9.

By 2000, after the boost
: “Election Gave Cable News a Wild Ratings Ride, but Now It Needs an Encore,”
Chicago Tribune
, December 19, 2000.

Starr called Brill
: Howard Kurtz, “Starr Defends ‘Background’ Talk,”
Washington Post
, June 14, 1998.

a five-minute address to the nation
: President Bill Clinton, remarks to the nation in response to Lewinsky scandal, August 17, 1998.

Gingrich saw none of this coming
: Steven Gillon,
The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 256.

Gingrich himself
: Ibid., pp. 254–56.

“Gingrich looked”
: Ibid.

Ken Starr delivered
: Ibid., p. 241.

The report itself was thus defensive
: “Testing of a President; Response of President’s Lawyers to Independent Counsel’s Report,”
New York Times
, September 13, 1998.

Blair, who loved synthesizing concepts
: E. J. Dionne, “ ‘Third Way’ Politics,”
Washington Post
, September 29, 1998.