Who is the party of hope?

SEVERAL DECADES AGO, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said the Democrats were the party of hope and the Republicans were the party of memory. While the words of this eminent historian--who was an ardent Democrat--may have been an oversimplification, they harbored a great deal of truth. From Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Party had captured the language of political idealism. They articulated a vision that American power, if effectively applied, could be a moral agent for change at home and around the globe. The wars fought under these presidents (World Wars I and II and the Cold War) were framed as moral crusades to curb aggression and protect democracy. By its intervention, the U.S. would lead the Old World of Europe and Asia out of its darkness into the light of freedom and prosperity. During those years, the Republican Party had no compelling alternative vision, beyond those who clung to isolationism. Conservatism was defined by its opposition to liberalism. William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most accomplished spokesmen of conservatism, wrote in the inaugural issue of the National Review in 1955 that the magazine stood, "athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' at a time when no one else was inclined to do so."

In the decades that followed, Buckley and his fellow conservatives would have a lot more to say. Nevertheless, during the years of mid-century America, conservatives and many Republicans were the party of memory, some arguing against the U.S.'s excessive internationalism and others against the legacy of the New Deal welfare state. Regardless of the merits of their policies, the Democrats had captured the moral high ground in American politics.

Pres. Lyndon Johnson set out to continue this tradition and did so with the passage of the Civil Rights law. Nonetheless, as a consequence of the Vietnam War, his presidency ended in disillusionment and defeat. Vietnam was a traumatic event for the Democrats and introduced a degree of cynicism about the role of America's military might into the party. The Dems' left wing harbored some of the country's most vehement critics of U.S. foreign policy. This critique, which in the 1960s found its notable spokesman in the scholarly J. William Fulbright, now finds its voice in the clownish Michael Moore--a sad journey indeed. The two post-Vietnam Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, stirred none of the idealism of Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or Kennedy. Despite occasional moments of high-sounding rhetoric, Carter and Clinton's policies, at home and abroad, reflected the limits of American power.

During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan captured idealism from the Democratic Party and even its language, transforming the face of the Republican Party and contemporary conservatism. In his famous address to the British Parliament in 1982, Reagan invoked the spirit of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy, urging that free nations, "foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means." Reagan believed, as did those Democratic predecessors, that the U.S. was on the right side of history and freedom was a universal aspiration. No one took this message more seriously since the events of 9/11 than Pres. George W. Bush.

During the Cold War, Reagan transformed U.S. policy from a defensive posture of containment to an offensive crusade for democracy and liberty. While not having to make war on the Soviets, Reagan took the ideological offensive, stunning those on both sides of the Iron Curtain who believed capitalism and free markets were becoming vestiges of the past. Bush, while lacking Reagan's rhetorical gifts, essentially has done the same thing. In Afghanistan and Iraq, he has converted the war on terror into a crusade for liberty and democracy in two countries that never have known either one.

In the 20th century, great military powers such as Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union posed the greatest threat to American values and security. In the 21st century, the threat comes from shadowy terrorist networks and rogue states that may harbor them. Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy believed that the spread of liberty was the greatest guarantor of this country's safety. They understood that, to persuade Americans to sacrifice blood and treasure in distant wars, the people must be convinced that the battle is consistent with the American creed.

The danger, as Wilson learned with his failed battle for the League of Nations and Johnson in Vietnam, is that idealism can outrun the capacity of the president to control events. It is too early to know whether Bush will fall into the same trap in Iraq. Failure would embolden the nihilists and the religious fanatics in Iraq and energize the cynics at home. The Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s gained the presidency as a result of the Democrats' failure to resolve the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. The caution that marked the foreign policies of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford may have been a necessary antidote for the time, but these presidencies were unable to build a broad political consensus for their party.