National Greatness Lite

TO get ahead, John McCain needs a movement and a program. At present, he has neither. He has, instead, a resume and a coterie. And the coterie is doing its best to transform the resume into a program (and itself into a mass movement) . In the coming period, this coterie has the formidable task of developing McCain’s appeal into a coherent program that will unify various malcontents into some McCainized version of movement conservatism.

This project will not be held back by lack of political talent. Outside of an immediate circle of advisers and consultants, the McCain coterie consists of William Kristol, the GOP strategist and editor of The Weekly Standard, David Brooks, the social critic and Standard senior editor, Marshall Wittmann, the wit and political strategist who now runs the McCainite Project for Conservative Reform (PCR), and journalistic outriders such as James P Pinkerton and Jeffrey Bell. This mountain of political imagination has labored on the question of how to develop McCainery and brought forth . . . National Greatness Conservatism (NGC). And on the PCR’s website, alongside articles hymning such ideas as national military service or America’s manifest destiny to conquer outer space, an apostolic succession of leaders in the National Greatness pantheon is announced with speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and McCain. All the scaffolding for a new tradition is in place.

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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TO get ahead, John McCain needs a movement and a program. At present, he has neither. He has, instead, a resume and a coterie. And the coterie is doing its best to transform the resume into a program (and itself into a mass movement) . In the coming period, this coterie has the formidable task of developing McCain’s appeal into a coherent program that will unify various malcontents into some McCainized version of movement conservatism.

This project will not be held back by lack of political talent. Outside of an immediate circle of advisers and consultants, the McCain coterie consists of William Kristol, the GOP strategist and editor of The Weekly Standard, David Brooks, the social critic and Standard senior editor, Marshall Wittmann, the wit and political strategist who now runs the McCainite Project for Conservative Reform (PCR), and journalistic outriders such as James P Pinkerton and Jeffrey Bell. This mountain of political imagination has labored on the question of how to develop McCainery and brought forth . . . National Greatness Conservatism (NGC). And on the PCR’s website, alongside articles hymning such ideas as national military service or America’s manifest destiny to conquer outer space, an apostolic succession of leaders in the National Greatness pantheon is announced with speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and McCain. All the scaffolding for a new tradition is in place.