n527  2144  01 Nov 80
 
BC-WILSON-11-02
    A COMMENTARY feature
    By David B. Wilson
    (c) 1980 Boston Globe (Field News Service)
    If Ronald Reagan loses, you can be reasonably sure of this: No
political leader preaching unapologetic, prairie patriotism,
limitation and decentralization of government, equality of
opportunity, free enterprise, individual liberty, lower taxes,
balanced budgets and a strong defense will stand a chance of winning
the nomination of either party in the foreseeable future.
    The nationalist, conservative trend in American politics of the last
decade will be reversed. New Class social democrats will regain
unchallenged control. The national guilt trip will resume and
accelerate.
    The belief that the United States is the cause of, rather than the
solution to, humanity's problems is characteristic of the privileged
elite of this country. Its most prominent recent exponents have been
former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and former Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara, retiring as World Bank president.
    But the idea that America, in Lincoln's haunting phrase, represents
''the last, best hope of Earth'' survives among the sovereign if
unsophisticated people of the provinces.
    That idea is incompatible with the view that the nation is a
historical basket case presenting an agenda of unsolved and perhaps
unsolvable problems to which political leadership must respond. The
notion that the country needs to be administered out of moral squalor
is alive and impatient in Washington.
    The therapeutic view of government, defining us all as clients and
patients, has been held by the controlling elements of the Democratic
Party since at least the New Deal.
    It is also the approach of those once-ruling factions of the
Republican Party at one time identified as ''liberal,'' since
transmuted into ''moderate'' and lately floundering toward something
called ''mainstream.''
    If President Carter defeats Reagan, the election four years hence
will be contested between a Democrat of the activist tradition, most
likely either Walter Mondale or Ted Kennedy, and some Republican
liberal.
    The Republican Right, quiescent since 1912, was revived in 1964 and
promptly squelched. It has been haunted for years by the memory of
Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. It cannot
survive the taking of another such bath.
    Nelson Rockefeller, the Old Guard's most prominent target, was the
author and exponent of the theory that a Republican candidate must
promise to do the same things, or the same kinds of things, the
Democrats do, but do them more cheaply and honestly.
    A corollary was that an ideologically conservative candidate would
appeal only to so limited an element of the electorate as to ensure
defeat.
    Given the personal and financial gifts Rockefeller was able to bring
to bear on the peculiar circumstances of New York politics, this
approach made a certain amount of operational sense.
    But Rocky and New York, singly and together, were unique. Strategy
dependent upon his charm and millions was not transferable to the
national scene. Now Rocky is gone.
    Nevertheless, the possibility of a sort of clean-cut, high-caste
WASP New Deal persisted in Republican thinking. West of Dedham, the
Hudson and the Susquehanna, the thing just didn't play.
    Reagan was nominated by a coalition of outsiders who had been denied
power, in a sense, since Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated the more
logically deserving Robert A. Taft in 1952.
    Despite Reagan's tactical campaign move toward the center, there is
no doubt about whom he represents within his party. To win by
appealing to the ordinarily Democratic constituencies of white
ethnics, blue collars and conservative Catholics is the Reagan battle
plan.
    If it doesn't work, it will be twice discredited, in 1964 and 1980,
fatally so, you can be sure.
    Given the generally acknowledged national movement to the right and
the least approved president-opponent since polling was invented, a
candidate with Reagan's record and gifts ought to be able to win it.
Carter has got to bican right and, indeed, the
Republican Party itself, might as well close up shop. The social
democrats, under whatever label, will possess the field. The nation
is at a turning point in its political history; and there will be no
turning back.
    ENDIT WILSON
    
ny-1102 0043est
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