This more modest narrative used to convince conservatives, and still does convince centrist liberals like me who cringe at the name McGovern. And Ronald Reagan plays a big role in it. Reagan did in fact restore (then overinflate) America’s self-confidence, and he did bequeath to Republicans a clear ideological alternative to Progressivism. But he also transformed American liberalism. As an author named Barack Obama once wrote, Reagan “put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” By delegitimizing Great Society liberalism and emphasizing growth, he forced the Democratic Party back toward the center, making the more moderate presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama possible. Reagan won the war of ideas, as everyone knows.

Except conservatives. The most important thing I learned from Kesler’s book is just how large a stake conservatives have in convincing themselves and voters that Reagan failed. Think about it: if they conceded ideological victory they would have to confront the more prosaic reasons that entitlements, deficits and regulations continue to grow in Republican and Democratic administrations alike. They would be forced to devise a new, forward-looking agenda to benefit even their own constituencies, like ensuring that American business can draw on an educated, healthy work force; can rely on modern public infrastructure; and can count on stable, transparent financial markets. And they would have to articulate a conservative vision for those welfare state programs that are likely to remain with us, like disability insurance, food stamps and Head Start.

George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” looked like a step in this direction, but it proved to be an empty slogan once the Republican establishment returned to power in 2001. The same will surely happen to Paul Ryan’s more sensible budget ideas if he and Mitt Romney are elected in November. By now conservative intellectuals and media hacks have realized that it’s much easier to run a permanent counterrevolution out of their plush think-tank offices and television studios than to reflect seriously, do homework and cut a deal. All they have to do is spook their troops into believing that the Progressive Idea is still on the march and that they are setting out to meet it at Armageddon. Until then, keep those checks and votes coming in.

The thing is, the conservatives have also spooked themselves. They now really believe the apocalyptic tale they’ve spun, and have placed mild-mannered Barack Obama at the center of it. It hasn’t been easy. Kesler admits that “Obama is at pains to be, and to be seen as, a strong family man, a responsible husband and father urging responsibility on others, a patriot, a model of pre-’60s, subliminally anti-’60s, sobriety.” But that’s just a disguise. In fact, he’s the “latest embodiment of the visionary prophet-statesman” of the Progressives, someone who “sees himself engaged in an epic struggle” whose success will mean “the Swedenization of America.” Or maybe its Harlemization, given that “the black church replaces the Puritans in Obama’s chronicle of American spirituality.” In any case, Barack Obama is, without doubt, the “most left-wing liberal to be elected to national executive office since Henry Wallace.” (Take that, Hubert Humphrey!)

And what is Kesler’s evidence for these extravagant claims? He hasn’t any. Early in the book he writes that Obama came to office planning “bold, systemic changes to energy policy, environmental regulation, taxation, foreign policy” — though he never describes these plans and in fact never mentions them again. He carefully avoids Obama’s moderate record, preferring instead to parse “The Audacity of Hope” for signs of Germanic statism and to cite liberal journalists gushing over the Black Messiah as proof that Obama sees himself that way. It amounts to nothing. By the final chapter, it becomes apparent that Kesler’s whole case against Obama and the liberalism whose “crisis” he quintessences rests on a single piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act of 2010. From Hegel to health care: what could be clearer?

Now, there are many reasons to be worried about the health care act, especially if the system it puts in place proves unmanageable and sours the public further on assertive government action when needed. But it is no reason to pull the fire alarm and declare, as Kesler does, that it is the “latest installment in modern liberalism’s long-running project to change America by changing Americans’ relation to their government” and marks “a new stage in the decline of constitutional government in America.” The Supreme Court has settled the constitutional issue, so now we have to make the thing work. Today’s conservatives, though, are too absorbed with their imaginary world-historical struggle even to change a light bulb. “If Communism, armed with millions of troops and thousands of megatons of nuclear weapons, could collapse, . . . why not American liberalism?” Kesler muses in his final pages. Those are the stakes.

What role does Barack Obama play in that struggle? A rather small one, as this book unintentionally shows. Had the Supreme Court overturned the Affordable Care Act, the right’s fever would not have dropped one degree, nor, I predict, will the patient come to its senses if the president is defeated in November. Is there a doctor in the house? Conservatives need a psychological specialist, someone at the level of the great Jewish sage and sometime physician Maimonides. In the late 12th century Maimonides received a letter from a group of rabbis in Marseille who had worked themselves into a frenzy over astrological predictions of the End Times. His prescription — I translate loosely from the Hebrew — was, Get a grip! “A man should never cast his reason behind him,” he warned, “for the eyes are set in front, not behind.” Excellent advice then, excellent advice now. And it sounds even better in German.