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Forty-five years ago, Barry Goldwater was convinced "that most Americans now want to reverse this trend." After all, the federal government had become, as the Chicago Tribune offered at the time, the "biggest land owner, property manager, renter, mover and hauler, medical clinician, lender, insurer, mortgage broker, employer, debtor, taxer and spender in all history."

But Goldwater lost, and by a landslide. What changed people's minds was the great failures of government in the 1960s and 1970s. Now we've come around full circle to the attitude of the late fifties or early sixties. There's less popular discontent and desire to reduce the size of government. People are mostly satisfied with the country and put up with a lot in the name of patriotism and security.

There's plenty of public revulsion now with social and cultural liberalism, but it's low level. It's based in the memory of what came earlier, and the remnants of 60s attitudes. In an uncertain world cultural conservatism doesn't quite translate into a desire for "less state and more freedom."

What made the Reagan-era sentiment so strong is that people had believed in government and been disappointed, so they looked to real change to set things right. Some of the Reagan-era attitudes carry over into the present, but there's not that force of disillusionment to provide the political energy for a change.

Today, conservatism is considered more a part of the status quo. When the next great wave for change comes it may take us in another direction. It's to be hoped that that won't be the case, but I don't see Bush or his successor getting the kind of momentum for real change that FDR or LBJ or RWR benefitted from.