The Great Debate

President Ronald Reagan (L), President George W. Bush (R, Top) and George H.W. Bush (R, Bottom) Reuters/Files

The hoopla over the new George W. Bush Library in Dallas, as well as some gauzy looks back penned by former aides, shows we are in the middle of “The Great Bush Revisionism.” The former president is being lauded and congratulated. But for what?

A new examination of Bushism may be helpful because the current scandals in Washington are the symptoms of too much power and too much arrogance.

The Internal Revenue Service did not target the Republican Party, which is considered part of the establishment. It targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups that were viewed as a threat to the establishment.

Americans need to be wary of revisionism at all times. They need to remember clearly how things were.

George McGovern’s death Sunday marked the departure of a remarkably influential figure in American national politics. Though remembered largely for his landslide defeat to Richard M. Nixon in the 1972 presidential race, McGovern succeeded in reshaping the U.S. political landscape for the next 40 years.

His losing campaign forged the modern political party. Just as Barry M. Goldwater’s crushing defeat in 1964 mobilized a generation of conservative activists and transformed the GOP, McGovern’s insurgency led to the modern Democratic Party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. For the South Dakotan senator bequeathed to his party a reconstituted style of politics, a cadre of activists and an new path to electoral victory.

McGovern’s star-crossed campaign opened up the entire U.S. political process—he appointed, for example, the first national party chairwoman. More important though, he created a template for challenging the party establishment, one emulated frequently over the next 40 years — by the Republican right as well as the Democratic left.