President Obama — Reagan Democrat

The Republican Party recession began in 2006 and deepened in 2008. With no clear sense of where GOP stock will hit bottom, the only consolation is, perhaps, that this isn’t the most disappointing conservative party showing in modern times, or even in the last few years.

Going into Britain’s 2005 parliamentary elections, the Conservative (Tory) Party expected to emerge from obsolescence. The Labor Party leader, Tony Blair, owned the Iraq war and the Tory leader, Michael Howard, had high hopes of moving to 10 Downing Street.

But the Tories lost the election, Howard stepped down, and Blair retired last year. Howard’s failure was mitigated by his part in ushering in his 39-year-old education secretary, David Cameron, as the new leader.

Instead of relying on a conventional agenda, Cameron repackaged conservatism, combining traditional party tenets with a renewed social consciousness.

A staunch EU opponent, he called for humanitarian intervention into Darfur. He called for less market regulation but also for business’s obligation to treat employees fairly, and encouraged family life. And while he pushed for increased border controls, he called for due process rights for suspected terrorists and rejected ID cards.

The Tories are now the bet to win the power in 2009. Cameron, a political alchemist, achieved a conservatism with a JFK brand.

His success doesn’t rest on moral certitude, biography, a detached policy presentation or the fact that he likes beer — although these are some of his attributes. It’s about the charisma of ideas. Cameron exudes the simple conviction that a body of thought can improve people’s lives, that a party platform can truly be the organizing principle for an entire country.

In the run-up to and aftermath of Republican defeat on Tuesday, there has been no shortage of pundits offering policy prescriptions for a GOP rebirth. But in a global landscape of anomie and hyper-competition, a renewed emphasis on the party’s core values of robust defense and corporate tax cuts, and a self-imposed exile from the zero-sum arena of cultural politics, is not only a winner, but timely.

So the question isn’t what policies or ideas the party needs. The question is, who will present them? Who is the GOP’s Cameron?

It is too easy to blame the Republicans’ aversion to younger leaders. The average age of GOP presidential candidates since World War II is 61, compared to 53 for Democrats. By Jan. 20, Democrats will have produced three of the country’s four youngest presidents: Obama, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy.

But the youth excuse does not bear scrutiny. In the two cases where Republicans chose charisma, age was irrelevant.

The Republican Revolution had nothing to do with Tom DeLay’s colonization of K Street or Frank Luntz’s processed messaging. It was about Newt Gingrich, whose intellectual celebrity had enormous trans-Beltway appeal because it was rooted in a simple belief that personal responsibility should define American lives and governance.

The other, larger example is Ronald Reagan. Although detractors attribute his charisma to celluloid charm and perfect line-delivery, its real source was his unwavering belief that supply-side economics and a muscular foreign policy would liberate America from economic malaise and existential Cold War timidity.

The perverse irony of this week’s election is that the person who displayed the deepest understanding of Reagan’s allure was the Democrat.

Obama was roundly criticized by Democrats for acknowledging (during a meeting with the Reno Gazette-Journal’s editorial board this past January) that Reagan ushered in an era of ideas. Sure, Obama had the advantage of Republican unpopularity, but it was his understanding that ideas matter, and to present his ideas through the prism of post-partisanship, that allowed him to pull off his electoral feat — not just of being the first black president, but also of being only the second Democrat to break 50 percent in more than 60 years.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s supposed great communicator, former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.), lacking a corpus of ideas and any apparent enthusiasm for government, limped out of the race after just four months of lackluster campaigning.

You can find him at Townhall.com. You will find Obama in the White House.

Mikhail is a former staff writer for The Hill.