A revolution does not march in a straight line,” Mao Tse-tung once said, and Ronald Reagan’s revolution makes the point, and unmakes it. “It wanders where it can, retreats before superior forces, advances wherever it has room, attacks whenever the enemy retreats or bluffs, and, above all, is possessed of enormous patience.”
In the State of the Union, Ronald Reagan let his revolution wander to where it could find room. Since interest rates and a glum recession had created a kind of cul-de-sac, Reagan found room and a convenient débouché in the “New Federalism.” Our President, it appears, has the genius of a true revolutionary—a healthy cunning— that shows itself not only in classic revolutionary maneuver, or in the revolutionary’s sense of mission, but also in selfdirectedness, i.e., staying on the no-tax-rise train when all of his lieutenants had jumped off. Also, Reagan has the capacity of speaking to conservative beliefs so directly as to be almost telegraphic. So much for sense number one of “straight line.” Now for sense number two.
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