An Old, Internal WSJ Divide Has Gone National

My former Wall Street Journal colleague Paul Gigot (he’s now the commentary boss there) was aptly and well honored by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month and delivered remarks (see below) about how many on the political right aren’t up to the challenge of defending the U.S., and world freedom. This mirrored personal exchanges the two of us had 30 years ago when we were both editorial columnists. Paul believes, as did our boss and mentor Robert Bartley, that America has a deep capacity for expending resources and will on a projection of military power in many key nodes around the globe to maintain said freedom. Then, and still, I have a more libertarian skepticism about that project. Now, however, there are varied conservative voices approaching such a view, and Paul is sounding the alarm about that. He argues persuasively for the maintenance of Pax Americana (my words); I’ll stipulate that despite periodic mischief and failure, the U.S. is reliably a better guarantor of a just order than other actors wanting to throw their weight around. The issue–now more than ever, with untold budget deficits and deep political rancor–is whether the U.S. is up to carrying that burden. Paul says yes, “We can make spending choices,” and to not push forward is to retreat to “the corner that Barack Obama and the left wanted to back us into.” It’s true that Obama and his heir Joe Biden have widened the welfare state. But the three cornerstone middle-class entitlements–Social Security, Medicare and the home-ownership tax breaks–are ever more in bipartisan embrace, and only growing in fiscal weight. No politician dares break that lock, for fear of being demagogued by the waiting ideological foe. Unlike cases such as New York City in the 1970s when pragmatists took hold to maintain vital functions in the face of insolvency, there is no workout by wisemen to be obtained by a federal intervention. My friend Paul engages in magic realism to suggest otherwise in the service of his worthy cause.

2023 Irving Kristol Award Presentation