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Hugh Gallagher explored what he called FDR’s Splendid Deception in his 1985 book of that title. In the title Gallagher was referring to FDR’s concealment of the polio-related paralysis that struck him in 1921. Gallagher was also a polio victim who understood the pain underlying Roosevelt’s efforts. Researching the book, Gallagher found that among the 35,000 photographs of Roosevelt at his presidential library, only two featured him in his wheelchair. Media of the day cooperated by ignoring his polio. Roosevelt himself went to extraordinary lengths to convey the impression that he could walk. “[T]he overwhelming fact about [FDR] is that...

Ideology Has ConsequencesBush rejects the politics of prudence.by Jeffrey Hart Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, “I asked for ice. But this is too much.” Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known.Recall the Eisenhower Republican Party. Eisenhower, a thoroughgoing realist, was one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century. So was the prudential Reagan, wary of using military force. Nixon would have been a good...

With 9/11, George W. Bush was reborn (again). Until then, his presidency had been undistinguished and his poll numbers low. He had also made one particularly ominous decision. In August 2001, using an executive order, Bush blocked federal support for stem-cell research. In substance that was bad enough—like many people I oppose disease and early death—but equally disturbing was the mindset. Bush summed it up in 2004, when he described stem-cell research as a project “to destroy life to save life.” Wait a minute. Here Bush was using the same word, “life,” to describe not only a minute clump of...

With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren’t. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks something’s got to change. Now seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006. Well, let’s be diplomatic and say they’d prefer divided government—soon....

August 28, 2006 Issue Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative Jeffrey Hart The terms “liberal” and “conservative” remain in current usage and probably retain value, but the question is a tricky one. We will begin with definitions, but things get difficult when we try to apply the terms to actual politicians and their policies. Let’s start with Hobbes and Locke and their assumptions about human nature. For Hobbes, man’s heart was savage. In the mythic pre-social “state of nature,” life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” That required the restraints of strong government. For Locke, in contrast, “the state...

The author, Jeffrey Hart,is a professor of English (emeritus) at Dartmouth College, a former speechwriter for presidents Reagan and Nixon and, most recently, the author of "The Making of the American Conservative. ==== William F. Buckley Jr. has defined conservatism as "the politics of reality." Ideology is the enemy of conservatism because it edits, omits or ignores reality. George W. Bush is an ideologue. Iraq is commonly said to be the centerpiece of Bush's presidency. The United States invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. But nearly three years after the invasion, no such weapons have...

The Banning of the Indian By Jeffrey Hart Editors’ Note: With the Student Assembly’s resolution to hold an Indian merchandise trade-in, The Dartmouth Review has decided to republish Jeffrey Hart’s article regarding the banning of the Dartmouth Indian. I judge the 1974 decision to attempt to abolish the Indian symbol to have been a moral, intellectual, and above all, because we are talking about an educational institution, an educational disaster. I do not speak from the standpoint of a nostalgic alumnus. I am not nostalgic for the so-called ‘old-Dartmouth’ and in fact transferred out of it after two years...