Revolt of the CEOs: a massive expansion of the federal government, supported by big business, is on the way. conservatives couldn't be less prepared.

• Author: Hayes, Christopher

Years from now, historians will argue over the exact moment at which the Great Conservative Crack-up finally occurred, and they'll have no shortage of candidates. Was it December 21, 2004, with the appearance of the first poll that showed a majority of Americans believed the Iraq War to be a mistake? Or September 2, 2005, when President Bush told Michael Brown he was doing a "heckuva job" while New Orleans drowned? Or a month later, when Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle indicted Tom DeLay?

But I'd take January 22, 2007. On that date, a who's who of corporate America--CEOs from such industrial stalwarts as Alcoa, DuPont, Caterpillar, Pacific Gas and Electric, and General Electric--joined environmental leaders at a Washington press conference on global warming. Their surprising message for the president and Congress: Please, for the love of God, regulate us.

It's worth lingering for a moment over just how strange this was. Back in 1997, when the Clinton administration signed the Kyoto Protocol, businesses lobbied the Senate strenuously not to ratify the treaty. And yet here were industry leaders--some with miserable environmental records and decades of experience fighting off the long arm of the law--taking the lead in advocating for a comprehensive, economy-wide regulatory regime to address global warming. It's a little like a thief who's been running from the cops suddenly stopping, turning around, thrusting out his wrists, and saying, "Arrest me."

These weren't the only CEOs asking government to step in and solve a pressing social problem. Two and a half weeks later, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott joined Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, to announce his company's support for some form of universal health care. When it comes to business's united front against regulation, as Leo Hindery, former CEO of the YES Network and author of the book It Takes a CEO, puts it, "[These guys are] looking and saying, 'Look, if we don't play this global-warming thing right, heck with politics, our company's going to get hurt. If we don't reform health care, I don't care if I'm a Republican, my company will fail.'"

Not everyone's happy about this shift. A Wall Street Journal editorial dubbed General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt a "climate profiteer," while CNBC analyst Larry Kudlow complained, "Wal-Mart's standing shoulder to shoulder with the public service unions who basically want nationalized health care. Is Wal-Mart just kind of getting duped into this?"

But other allies of the corporate sector see these moves less as betrayals or mistakes and more as a turning of the page. "The country goes through cycles, and I think we are in a different period now," Charles Kolb, a pillar of the Beltway establishment and the president of the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington-based business advocacy group, told me. Kolb served in both the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, and he said that he sees Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's downsizing of the regulatory state as historic achievements. But, he went on, "the issue is not whether [Franklin D.] Roosevelt was right or wrong, or whether Reagan was right or wrong. Look, the question I would ask is, Are there areas that we need to rethink?"

If the nation's business leaders seem increasingly open to an expansion of government's role in dealing with climate change and health care, they're not alone. A recent New York Times poll found 52 percent of Americans rating global warming as "very serious," while 63 percent agreed that "[p]rotecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost." And according to an October 2006 USA Today survey, 68 percent of Americans believe providing health care coverage for everyone is more important than keeping taxes down. The sentiment extends more broadly: last year, a Pew poll showed that only 45 percent of Americans now think the government needs to get smaller, down from 61 percent a decade ago.

If these polls and other political winds are any indication, then massive change may be coming to Washington in the near future, most likely starting in January 2009. On energy and health care--two huge...