DP: This is one of those hours, I have to tell you, folks, where I just feel very fortunate to get paid to do what I would love to do anyway. I’m just enjoying this immensely, talking to George Will. His latest book, One Man’s America, and it’s so worth reading. It’s up at Pragerradio.com at the blog. All right, George Will, you were addressing the conservatives who won’t vote for John McCain. You and I know plenty of reasons why we may not have been for him in the primaries, but the election is a different story, presumably. 

GW: It is. The first thing any man elected president has to do is staff the government. That is, he has to fill about 3,000 policy making Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level positions. The Republican conservative pool of 3,000 is going to be a lot healthier making day to day decisions that affect our schools and our business and everything else in American life, a lot healthier, better for freedom, than the 3,000 on the other. So there are 3,000 reasons right there. I’ll give you five additional reasons. They’re Supreme Court justices. Someone once said, I think it was Justice Brennan, said the most important word in the Supreme Court isn’t law, freedom, justice, no. The most important word is five. Now…because that’s a Supreme Court majority. On Inauguration Day, January 20^th, 2009, five of the nine Supreme Court justices will be over 70 years old. The two most liberal, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, will be 76, and John Paul Stevens will be 88. The next president is going to have in the first term, in all likelihood, two at a minimum, maybe three or even four, Supreme Court appointments to fill. That is just too important to let fall to the other side here.  

DP: Oh, that was the other five reasons. Okay, I got you now. The…in light of that, do you make any predictions as of this moment? Because as of this moment, every poll says they’re essentially tied. 

GW: Well, most polls, I think, show about a five or six point advantage to Obama, which is just outside the margin of error. So I think I’d say Obama is ahead. He’s running way behind his party. That is, the exit polls in the 2004 election showed, in terms of party identification, the Republicans and Democrats absolutely tied, 37% for one, 37% for the other. Today, there’s an astonishing fourteen point advantage for the Democrats. So Obama is running substantially behind his party, as it were. On the other hand, I think he has, he hasn’t made the sale yet, but if he can make the sale, he can win not just narrowly, but decisively. The analogy is with Reagan in 1980. I thought going into the ’80 election, 80% of the country did not want to vote for Carter. I’m not saying they decided not to, but didn’t want to. There was no enthusiasm there, and it was up to Reagan simply to convince these people that he was acceptable, plausible as commander in chief. Once he did that in the one debate they had in Cleveland, in late October, it was clear he was going to win, as he did win decisively. Every traditional indicator, I mean, every one points to a Democratic victory this year. Just to take a few of them, enthusiasm for the candidate, party registration, fundraising ability, the fact that 80% of the time, when a party tries to extend from two to three terms its consecutive tenure in the White House, 80% of the time, you fail. Only once since the Second World War, that is George Herbert Walker Bush, has a party extended its hold on the White House from two to three terms, and that was because in 1988, the country did not want change. It really wanted a third Reagan term, and that was the closest way it could get to it. This time, with 82% of the country saying the country’s on the wrong track, this is a classic change election. So it’s an uphill climb for John McCain. 

DP: Do you lose sleep…I don’t mean literally, but figuratively, concerning an Obama victory? 

GW: Well, sure I do. First of all, he is young and inexperienced on national security. And I’m a Constitutionalist conservative, so I take the Supreme Court very seriously. And his judges would cause my hair to curl, I’m afraid. On the other hand, let’s keep our perspective here. We tend to get so fixated on the presidency, and the reckless rhetoric of all sides, where will the president take us, what will the president do to manage the economy…presidents don’t take this country places. Presidents don’t manage the economy. This country and economy is driven by the free choices and decisions and energies of 303 million people making choices and starting businesses and raising children. Politics isn’t quite as important as we sometimes think it is.  

DP: But it’s hard to make those choices if you will be taxed at a 60% rate. 

GW: I understand that, and the Democrats may just be foolish enough to do, to put in place the kind of wealth-destroying, job-destroying regime that will throw them into another period of losing seven out of ten presidential elections. The political market works. When you make really bad decisions which have really bad consequences, people correct them pretty fast, and pretty emphatically. Remember, this country survived Millard Fillmore. This country survived Chester Arthur. This country survived Jimmy Carter. We’re a lot tougher and more resilient than people think. 

DP: Well, I don’t know that anymore. I hope you’re right, but you see my worry is not political, but cultural. 

GW: Yes. 

DP: And the culture, I was just reporting on a story, Orange County, California, supposedly a bastion of conservative values, 10,000 people lining up to moon and Amtrak train. 

GW: Good grief, and their votes cancel you’re and my votes. 

DP: They certainly do.  

GW: Think of that. What was their point? 

DP: There is no point. That is the decay that worries me more than any political trend. 

GW: I agree that the great cause for worry is cultural, that my old friend and best friend was Pat Moynihan, the Senator from New York, Democratic Senator. And he said you conservatives know one thing. For Pat, that was kind of a concession. He said you know that the culture of a society more than the politics of the society determine the success of the society. And if you’re not careful, the politics of the society can have a deleterious effect on the culture.

End of segment.