Liberal commentator E.J. Dionne moderates a discussion on why contemporary conservatism has gotten off track during the eight years of the Bush administration and how "true" conservatism can be restored to prominence.
Panelists David Frum, Mickey Edwards, and Ross Douthat consider what it means to call oneself a conservative in today's America and what it could mean in the coming years.
Bio
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. spent fourteen years with the New York Times, reporting on state and local government,
national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. The Los Angeles Times praised his coverage of the Vatican as the best in two decades.
In 1990, Dionne joined the Washington Post as a reporter, covering national politics. His best-selling book, Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1991. The book, which Newsday called "a classic in American political history," won the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was a National Book Award nominee.
Dionne began his op-ed column for the Post in 1993, and it is syndicated to more than 100 other newspapers. He has been a regular commentator on politics on television and radio.
Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat is an associate editor at The Atlantic and the author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (Hyperion, 2005), and The Party of Sam's Club, with Reihan Salam, which is forthcoming in 2008 from Doubleday.
He is the film critic for National Review, and he writes frequently on domestic policy, national politics, pop culture and religion.
Mickey Edwards
Mickey Edwards is director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. Edwards represented Oklahoma in Congress for 16 years, where he was a member of the House Republican leadership. He is currently a lecturer at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he has taught at Harvard, Harvard Law School, and Georgetown University. Edwards also been an advisor to the State Department and is a director of the Constitution Project. He has been a columnist for a number of newspapers, is the author of two books, and is co-author of a third. He has chaired task forces on foreign policy for The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations.
David Frum
David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing editor to National Review, a columnist for Canada's National Post newspaper, and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph in Great Britain and to National Public Radio in the United States. He is also the author of the new book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, forthcoming in January from Random House.
From January 2001 to February 2002, David Frum was special assistant to President Bush for economic speechwriting.
Frum's first book, Dead Right (1994), was described by William F. Buckley as "the most refreshing ideological experience in a generation," and by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the smartest book written from the inside about the American conservative movement." In 1996, the Wall Street Journal acclaimed him as "one of the leading political commentators of his generation." Frum's history of the 1970s, How We Got Here, was published in January 2000. "More than any other book I know," said Michael Barone, editor of The Almanac of American Politics, "it shows how we came to be the way we are." In 2001, Judge Richard Posner's study of public intellectuals listed Frum as one of the 100 most influential minds in the United States.
Frum was born in Toronto, Canada in 1960. He received a simultaneous BA and MA in history from Yale in 1982. He was appointed a visiting lecturer in history at Yale in 1986; in 1987, he graduated cum laude from the Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Federalist Society.
Frum was an editor on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992. In 1992-1994, Frum wrote the law column at Forbes magazine. Between 1994 and 2001, Frum was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research.
Frum lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, journalist and novelist Danielle Crittenden Frum, and their three children.
Vin Weber
Vin Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock, where he provides strategic advice to institutions with matters before the legislative and executive branches of the federal government and advises clients on issues pertaining to mergers and acquisitions, crisis management, and strategic communications. Weber serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A former congressman, Weber represented Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 1981 to 1993. He is former chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy and a former member of the US secretary of defense's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and the US secretary of state's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion. He is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota and serves as a board member of several private-sector and nonprofit organizations, including the Aspen Institute.
I am curious why EJ was chosen as the moderator of this discussion. He seems out of place and attempts to add insight where none is required. He only distracts from the a truly introspective debate for conservatives; he muddles up what could have been an intellectual step forward for viewers with partisan mud slinging. Utterly disappointing. I would expect more from Minnesota.
It "looks like 1980"? No it doesn't looklike 1980. Not at all. The party in power then was not reviled by the majority of the public. Where has George Bush and Lon Cheney been throughout the 2008 campaign? When has a President failed to make a showing at his party's convention? Why has George Bush stayed home and kept out of the way of McCain's campaign? I'll tell you why: Because the American public can't stand to see the lying bastard's face! Republicans are on the way out. Hopefully for good.
member. 
