“We’ll do all the things the Democrats are trying to do, but we’ll do it better”: That was for a long time the conservative parody of the way a certain kind of Republican campaigned. No, conservatives said: We needed a change in direction, a different philosophy, a government that stopped trying to do some things altogether.
Donald Trump doesn’t generally make that kind of ideological critique of current government policy. Instead he promises, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, to run the government better. Tonight he said he would stick with the outlines of Obama’s Cuba policy, but drive a harder bargain. He would try to make an Israeli-Palestinian deal, as presidents of both parties generally try to do, but he’ll succeed. Social Security will be saved, primarily by rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
The conservatives were right: Better management isn’t enough. Social Security needs structural reform to be made solvent. But conservatives overlearned the lesson, and have not always appreciated the importance of managing the government we have–or appreciated the appeal of better management to voters. Part of why Trump is doing well is that he has cornered this market–mostly for lack of competition.