The Stakes: What happens if Gore wins?

Imagine a Birkenstock on your face-forever.

That's pretty much the way conservatives picture a Gore administration. It's easy for them to forget that for the nonideological voter, the stakes in this election are low. There is no crisis to resolve, no imminent threat to confront. Washington seems less important than ever before. It was plausible to think in 1984 that if Walter Mondale won the election, the consequences-for the economy, for America's position in the world, for taxes-would be dire. It's a lot harder to say that about Al Gore.

Some of Gore's policies, to be sure, would be quite destructive. His prescription-drug plan would probably lead to price controls that would cripple the pharmaceutical industry and slow medical progress. But one could forgive the casual observer of the presidential race for concluding that the choice between Gore and George W. Bush is inconsequential: a choice between bigger or smaller tax cuts; a less or more comprehensive missile-defense system; weaker or tougher regulation of HMOs. Even on Social Security, where the difference between the candidates appears to be stark, the real difference may be a matter of degree. Gore, like Bush, would bring millions more Americans into the stock market. Either candidate's policy, then, would create more favorable conditions for the eventual replacement of Social Security by individual investment accounts.

Yet conservatives are not wrong to consider this a high-stakes election. It is, to be specific, a high-stakes election for conservatives. For at least 40 years, their unifying goal has been to repeal the welfare state, or at least force it to retrench. Conservatism, considered as a movement dedicated to that goal, is on life support. Gore's election could be the final blow.

Gore's election would be the culmination of Bill Clinton's project of relegitimizing government in the eyes of the middle class. Clinton's accomplishment was not to change public policies so much as to change the political climate. The policies he enacted were mostly trivial. (Among the proudest boasts of his administration is that he forced employers to give parents time off to take care of sick kids. The leave did not, however, have to be paid.)

Clinton's success was political, and that success can best be measured by looking at his opponents. Just as Ronald Reagan forced the Democrats to acquiesce in many of his policies-by 1988, not even Jesse Jackson was talking about restoring 70 percent tax rates-so Clinton has made it impossible for Republicans to make a direct attack on big government. The Republican platform no longer calls for the elimination of the Department of Education. George W. Bush's antigovernment rhetoric is muted at best. Anyone who still doubts that "compassionate conservatism" is a retreat from small-government conservatism just hasn't been listening to the governor: "Our state of Texas is a compassionate state," Bush said in August, adding, "We're actively signing up children to the Children's Health Insurance program."

If Bush is elected, it would still be possible to make indirect attacks on the welfare state. Tax cuts would at least arrest the federal government's growth; tort reform would weaken the liberal coalition; freer trade would discipline the regulatory state; private Social Security accounts would nudge the electorate rightwards. With the White House in their control, Republicans could begin rebuilding their party in California. With both the White House and Congress, they might even be able to start making inroads among black voters.

If Gore is elected, on the other hand, even this sort of progress would be unachievable. Conservatives would be hard pressed to prevent the federal government from growing, let alone to shrink it. Gore would be able to use the expected federal surpluses of the next few years to create new entitlements. Long after the surpluses vanish, the entitlements would linger on-as would the statist constituencies they would create.

Conservatives would be marginalized in the courts as well. A few more Supreme Court appointments by Democrats would ensure that school choice will be strangled in the crib. The Court would be guaranteed to protect abortion from any serious regulation for another generation, and might even create a constitutional right to public funding for it. The Court would rule that preferences based on race and sex were permissible, then mandatory. How much further the Court would go on issues such as euthanasia would depend mostly on how much running room the justices thought they had.

It is a commonplace to say that the biggest prize to win in November is the power to nominate Supreme Court justices. What is less often remarked is that it's more important for the Right. If Bush named a few justices, on most issues liberals would live on to fight another day. Assume, for instance, that Bush nominated judges he thought would overrule Roe v. Wade; that these nominees were confirmed by the Senate; and that a majority of the Court then voted to overturn Roe. Even under these heroic assumptions, liberals would still be able to defend legal abortion in legislatures, in referenda, and in state courts. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, are locked out of normal politics, and a few more Gore nominees would add a deadbolt. The same asymmetry applies to school choice: A favorable decision would still leave the teachers' unions with plenty of resources, but an adverse one would lock kids in failing schools, with conservatives unable to open the doors from the outside.

So Gore would move public policy to the left, and make it hard to reverse that slide. Campaign-finance regulations would no doubt be designed to hobble conservatives, although they have been known to backfire. (Thank goodness for the law of unintended consequences.) The Kyoto protocol on global warming would give international bodies the power to impose liberal energy policies on America. Even if Republicans rebounded in 2002-quite likely, since redistricting will almost certainly yield a more favorable map for them-the damage would be hard to undo. But it gets worse. The effects of Gore's election on policy would be compounded by its likely effects on the Republican party.

The backbiting after a loss would be intense; almost everyone in the party has a lot invested in Bush, often literally. "Look at Wall Street in 1929 and then you'll figure out what it'll look like," says Marshall Wittmann, a political analyst at the Hudson Institute. John McCain's supporters could certainly be counted on to tell us what might have been. So too religious conservatives, libertarians, business leaders, etc. It's possible that the result of this free-for-all would be a smarter conservatism. But Republican elites might very well draw foolish lessons from a defeat. The party might just move left, enthusiastically embracing policies it has previously adopted only with extreme reluctance and fine-print qualifiers. If a President Gore were able to keep his liberal supporters in line and run a centrist administration, the GOP might even move in a Buchananite direction. In either case, the party would put most of its hopes in a well-timed recession.

The political strength of the Right would be reduced by one final factor: its own demoralization. Religious conservatives, instructed by the courts that they will never be allowed to enact their deepest aspirations, might head for the hills. They will have been essentially told to leave politics, and some of them will accept the invitation. If Gore wins, there would also be an exodus of smart young people from Republican ranks. They will leave the GOP for the same reason people are leaving the military: Morale in the institution will be low, and brighter opportunities will beckon elsewhere. The cost of that loss of talent would be hard to gauge.

All in all, then, there would be very few silver linings for conservatives in a Gore presidency. Which is why they should do whatever they can to ensure that there isn't one.