Not Dead Yet

A WEEK before Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in 1977, I picked my way gingerly across an iceglazed central Washington to the Mayflower Hotel to attend an ISI dinner at which former candidate Ronald Reagan was to address about 300 conservative scholars. Reagan had narrowly lost the GOP nomination five months before. The smart money, I was told, believed that the former California governor in his mid60s would now retire honorably and leave the field to a younger generation of conservatives.

Two hours later, 300 people were giving Reagan a standing ovation after a speech in which he had called for a “New Republican Party” that would bring together economic conservatives and working-class Democrats who were conservative on the social issues (chiefly crime, abortion, busing, and quotas). At a string of late-night parties in the Mayflower’s corridors the scholars, getting less scholarly by the minute, were shouting that the “Old Man” was running again. And Reagan’s second, successful bid for the presidency had been launched.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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A WEEK before Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in 1977, I picked my way gingerly across an iceglazed central Washington to the Mayflower Hotel to attend an ISI dinner at which former candidate Ronald Reagan was to address about 300 conservative scholars. Reagan had narrowly lost the GOP nomination five months before. The smart money, I was told, believed that the former California governor in his mid60s would now retire honorably and leave the field to a younger generation of conservatives.

Two hours later, 300 people were giving Reagan a standing ovation after a speech in which he had called for a “New Republican Party” that would bring together economic conservatives and working-class Democrats who were conservative on the social issues (chiefly crime, abortion, busing, and quotas). At a string of late-night parties in the Mayflower’s corridors the scholars, getting less scholarly by the minute, were shouting that the “Old Man” was running again. And Reagan’s second, successful bid for the presidency had been launched.