What's Right

About this book

American conservatism in the later 1990s is both triumphant and turbulent. In Dead Right (1994), hailed as required reading for any thinking person, David Frum explained how and why conservatism stands divided. Now, in What's Right, he points the way forward. Frum celebrates a conservatism that defends both liberty and morality: a fusion that has made him one of the country's best-known young conservative commentators. In this collection of essays and articles, Frum dissects Pat Buchanan's populism, explains why Newt Gingrich dominates the Republican Party, examines Colin Powell's brand of bureaucratic conservatism, and mourns the end of Jack Kemp's political career. And, in one of the book's most disturbing sections, he shows how the Republicans have inadvertently built a nominating process as dysfunctional as anything the Democrats have inflicted on themselves. Frum grounds his case in a fascinating tour through conservative intellectual history: the genius of Russell Kirk, the errors of John Maynard Keynes, and the reasons Republicans were right not to be wild about Harry Truman. Perceptive, funny, and challenging, What's Right is a book that readers will return to long after the excitement of campaign '96 has been forgotten; it's conservative thought at its most timeless and quotable.