So goes the nation: you can't build a national party on post-nationalism.

MORE was lost on November 7 than an election. The project of making the GOP a truly national majority party also evaporated. And it did so despite the fact that a Republican president was given an unparalleled opportunity by 9/11 to build such a party on the foundations of a new, inclusive patriotism.

Elections come around regularly. You win some, you lose some. But natural majority parties win more elections than they lose. And they continue to exert an influence on policy even when they are out of office. America was governed by liberal ideas during the long dominance of the FDR coalition, even in the brief periods when the Republicans won power. Clinton governed in a much more conservative fashion than he had intended--like "Eisenhower Republicans," he famously complained--because he governed in the shadow of Reagan and under the constraints of Reaganism.

But when Bush 43 was inaugurated in January 2001, America had no natural majority party. It was a nation split almost down the middle--actually, leaning slightly leftwards if we take Ralph Nader's vote into account--and potentially open to conversion by either major party. Karl Rove's response in 2000 (and, as events turned out, in 2004 as well) was to seek a narrow political victory by focusing on every identity and interest group sympathetic to the GOP and ensuring that they turned out to vote. That incremental approach can win an election, but it cannot build a long-term majority party. What typically creates a new national majority is a massive real-world event--the 1930s Depression, the Vietnam debacle--on which one party reflects strong public sentiment more powerfully than the other.

September 11 was just such an event. Though there was a united bipartisan patriotic response to the attack, the GOP was better placed to gain politically from it than the Democrats. It is the natural party of patriotism and national defense just as the Democrats are the natural party of compassion and the welfare state. Both parties duly tried to exploit 9/11 politically in their own ways: Democrats argued that the bravery of police and firemen had shown the value of government, Republicans that the attack showed the need for a strong defense. This struggle to interpret 9/11 was initially won by the Republicans. The Democrats found themselves endorsing the Afghan and Iraq Wars--which, as their subsequent behavior has shown, they viscerally disliked.

But the reactions of both to 9/11, while important as policy, were culturally superficial. Neither really grasped that 9/11 might have significantly changed our ideas of American nationhood. The upsurge of patriotism on the part of ordinary Americans was uncomplicatedly nationalist. Its slogan was "United We Stand" and it expressed the "melting-pot" theory of American unity rooted in assimilation. This coexisted uneasily alongside a more recent theory of American nationhood: the official multiculturalism of the media, cultural, and political elites who were suspicious of assimilation as nativist. Their virtual slogan was "Why do they hate us?" One theory or the other would eventually prevail. And whether it was patriotism or multiculturalism would determine inter alia the next majority party.

The Democrats were the party of multiculturalism. If the mood of patriotism were allowed to dissipate, the Democrats would benefit by default from the balkanizing effects of a revived multiculturalism. If, however, Bush and the Republicans could shape the inchoate mood of outraged patriotism into a substantial practical politics of American unity, they could well build a permanent new majority around this vision.

At the time several commentators-- including Kate O'Beirne and myself in NR--pointed out that this great opportunity was being ignored. Our analyses were largely general, however, and lacked the kind of practical ideas on implementing a new policy that political parties want. As it happens, just such advice was being given, then and later, to the White House in a series of memos from scholars in a Washington think tank.

Their argument was that in the post-9/11 climate "it should be possible to mount an initiative that changes the terms of debate on such issues as multiculturalism, the teaching of American history and civics, and the general question of American exceptionalism. Animated by generosity of spirit and without a trace of racism or xenophobia, such an initiative would have broad bi-partisan appeal and could lead to permanent cultural/political realignments."

Their memos went on to lay out practical proposals to revive, strengthen, and entrench patriotic American unity. They argued that Veterans Day should be transformed into a celebration of the "greatest generation," who fought and won World War II--and that the Washington celebration could then be used as a teaching device in America's schools. They proposed a presidential commission, perhaps headed by Rudy Giuliani, to develop ideas for implementing "assimilative patriotism" (an idea championed by such figures as Teddy Roosevelt) throughout American life. They advocated a "Citizenship Agency" that would teach the obligations of citizens (rather than simply dispense "services" to immigrants) as part of a wider program of celebrating citizenship. And they urged that the president regularly preside over the swearing-in of new citizens in public ceremonies "that should be dignified, inspiring, and foster patriotism."

In making such proposals, they avoided obvious pitfalls. The program was carefully bipartisan. Even though the administration would have political motives for pushing the program, its main purpose would be to shape an inclusive patriotism open to all. It would seek to convert Democratic-leaning constituencies to an unhyphenated American identity rather than to exclude them. Thus, the celebration of the "greatest generation" would have been focused on Sen. George McGovern as well as on Sen. Robert Dole. The think-tankers also neatly finessed the internal GOP dispute over immigration--essentially ignoring illegal immigrants and focusing on the historical success of assimilation. In particular, their program of "patriotic assimilation" would be avowedly directed toward those immigrants who had followed the law in their path to citizenship. Finally, as well as assimilating new immigrants into American life, they sought to remind native-born Americans of the benefits of being an American. They explicitly invoked the example of FDR in advocating this program. They thus sought to join new legal immigrants and the native-born in an updated, unified American patriotism-- and they hoped Bush would imitate FDR's success in making his party the vanguard and vessel of this American unity.

The memos seem to have been ignored by the White House. A few meetings were held to discuss these ideas, but neither specific proposals nor a policy embodying their broad insights ever emerged. Doubtless one reason is the nature of modern government. The White House is a bureaucratic maze; time is short; good ideas get lost at the bottom of briefcases.

But the more important reason is probably that President Bush himself seems to be a not-very-covert multiculturalist. His administration moved in exactly the opposite direction to the advice tendered. Its budgets massively increased spending on bilingual education. He gave no support to the various referendum initiatives on making English the official language. He signaled to the U.S. Supreme Court that he favored the continuation of racial preferences. And he favors an immigration policy that is hard to distinguish from "open borders."

One result of these policies is that he threw away the chance to create a new inclusive American patriotism--and with it a new majority status for the GOP.

Not all conservatives will object to this failure. Many libertarians (alerted by the non-hostile reference to FDR) will feel that this government-encouraged patriotism is something best avoided--indeed, that it is "statist." As James C. Bennett reminds us in The Anglosphere Challenge, however, modern states tend to be of two kinds: those held together by a common culture, and those held together by government transfer payments. When George Bush chose multiculturalism, he also opted for massive government spending.

As the election result showed, however, as well as being the party of multiculturalism, the Democrats are the party of transfer payments. And they're better at both.