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Every presidential election is about change, and no more so than at the end of a two-term president's time in the White House. Parties have to constantly update themselves if they hope to remain relevant. The difficulty for both Republicans and Democrats is that our political system is at a point where more than the normal amount of party growth and development is needed. Both parties are suffering the consequences of seeing substantial parts of their 20th-century agendas adopted; both parties are struggling to fashion new answers to the new challenges of a young century.

Dead on right. Whatever happens in the elections this time (and it doesn't look good for us now), conservatism will be a force. It does need to be updated, though. We've been pushing the same buttons, the same way for too long. Newt's been on talking about this for a while. We have to show how enduring principles are relevant. Otherwise, in 50 years we'll end up sounding like Teddy Kennedy does now when he talks about Camelot and the Great Society.

President Reagan's gifts to the Republican Party were ideas: growing the economy through tax cuts, limiting government's size, forcefully confronting totalitarian threats, making human rights a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, respecting unborn human life, empowering the individual with more freedom. Those ideas endure. They give Republicans a philosophical foundation on which to build. The Reagan coalition has a natural desire to stick together. Fiscal, defense and values conservatives have more in common with each other than with any major element of the Democratic Party's leadership.

Conservative principles are more in line with nature than liberalism. There will thus always be an appeal to conservatism in the Reagan mold.