Where there’s Will, there’s a lot to say in Reagan Library speech

Political orphan talks about his book



George Will

George Will

Three years after abandoning the Republican Party in the wake of Donald Trump’s rise to power, George Will has not abandoned the values that made him the darling of conservative thinking for more than four decades.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author made an appearance at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley on June 25 to promote his new book, “The Conservative Sensibility,” which was published June 4.

Although advertised as a “lecture,” Will fielded questions posed by Anthony Pennay, the library’s chief learning officer, and members of the audience. Subjects ranged from Will’s analysis of the founding fathers’ view of the nascent country more than two centuries ago to the changing role of the president.

Any audience members expecting a diatribe against the current president went home disappointed as Will cagily avoided mentioning Trump’s name even once, referring to him only as “this president.”

While unaffiliated with any political party, Will dedicated his book to former Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, his first political idol and the father of modern conservative thinking, who lost the 1964 presidential election to Lyndon Johnson in a historic landslide. Will claimed that Goldwater “didn’t lose—he won. It just took them 16 years to count the votes.”

During the 1964 election, Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech, “A Time for Choosing,” on Goldwater’s behalf. Though it failed to rescue Goldwater’s candidacy, it launched Reagan’s own political career; he was elected California governor in 1966 and president in 1980.

Will credited an 1854 speech by Abraham Lincoln with setting him on the path to write the new book. In that speech, Will said, Lincoln was adamant that “America’s not just about majority rule, it’s not about a process, it’s about a condition of liberty.”

Will explained the Founding Fathers’ desire to make government safe and limited by instituting a separation of powers among three branches of government— the executive, legislative and judicial branches—for the purpose of “slowing government down.”

“Laws should not be made precipitously,” Will said, and stated his belief that today’s Congressional gridlock is not “an American problem, it’s an American achievement.”

Among Will’s heroes in American history are James Madison, co-author of “The Federalist Papers,” who strived for “mitigated democracy,” and George Washington, who said that the Senate was “the saucer into which we pour our tea so that it will cool.”

In contrast, Will called Woodrow Wilson a “villain,” who dismissed the idea of the separation of powers as being outdated and stressed the importance of executive power over that of Congress. Will traced the increasing dominance of the executive branch to Theodore Roosevelt’s belief that “I can do anything I’m not explicitly forbidden to do.”

Will’s talk also stressed the Founding Fathers’ fear of demagoguery, and told how Thomas Jefferson was the last president to deliver the State of the Union address in person to Congress until Woodrow Wilson.

“Jefferson didn’t like the sound of his own voice. I wish we had more presidents like that,” Will quipped, garnering a laugh from the audience.

Will made another oblique reference to Trump when he quoted Reagan’s favorite president, Calvin Coolidge: “It is a very great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, to know he is not a great man.”

Despite saying that he didn’t want to talk about “the current president,” Will finally addressed the issue that drove him from the Republican Party by intoning two words: “Manners matter.”

“Americans today are united in being sad and embarrassed and exhausted,” he said in conclusion. “It seems to me the American people are going to not only welcome, they’re going to insist, very soon, on a change of tone.”