markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2003/12/what_if_bush_is.html
For a long time, Ive argued that there wasnt much profit to talking about Bush as a conservative, right-wing, or extremist President. Caldwell comments, Crowd-pleaser though it may be, there is no credible basis for this charge. Correct or not, one can assemble a logical argument that Bush is a bad president. It is a dubious proposition, in fact, that he is governing from the right at all. Before going on, lets point out that theres a difference between conservative/right-wing and radical. The term radical was never even associated with conservatism until the late 60s, and referred to groups like the John Birch Society, which were as dedicated to the destruction of the existing order as the radical left-wing groups of the time like the Weather Underground. But in the sense that radical means a change down to the very roots of society, it may be more suited to Bush than conservative. It is exactly right to call the underlying vision of his tax policy, which is a system that taxes exclusively income from labor, and exempts income from investment, the most radical idea since socialism, to quote John Edwards. But in most other cases, and particularly when it comes to government spending, the administration and Congress are not operating from any deep principles of government, just seeing what they can get away with to benefit their friends and contributors, and figuring out how to win an election so they can keep doing it. Caldwell also argues that the administration is neither conservative nor consistently hardline on foreign policy, but thats a tough question and I dont want to take it on right now. I suspect historians will struggle for years over the meaning of the Bush Doctrine, and even whether it is a doctrine at all or just an occasional pose. Caldwell argues that to compare Bush either to his father or to Ronald Reagan is to seek the wrong model for Mr.
Now, I hate to hear the word socialist used to refer to any aspect of the social safety net almost as much as I hate words like fascist used to describe conservatives, so Ill just ignore that bit of innuendo. If this is correct, it adds an important dimension to the debate over Bush-hating. Its now beyond dispute that Nixons presidency was close to the high-water mark for American liberalism in domestic policy, and very much an extension of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations that preceded it. Most liberals let their well-founded Nixon-hatred blind them to the complexity of his agenda. Greenberg has a great quote from a young Bob Kuttner, later editor of The American Prospect, writing in the Village Voice in 1973,My God, hes dismembering the Great Society before the Texans boots are cold. Had liberals understood just how Nixons initiatives would compare to everything that would follow in the next thirty years, they might have thought about him a little differently, although his ethics and his expansion of the Vietnam War are not small matters. But there are significant differences between Nixons liberalism and Bushs domestic initiatives. For one thing, the Nixon-era initiatives were pretty sound and responsible, with the exception of wage and price controls. No one doubts the efficacy of the EPA or the idea that disabled people should be protected from becoming destitute. An amusing footnote to this is that the man Nixon brought in to gut the OEO was a young Illinois congressman, Donald Rumsfeld, who in turn hired a recent PhD on an American Political Science Association fellowship named Dick Cheney. And their receptionist was a well-bred, well-connected recent graduate from New Jersey named Christie Todd. Bushs domestic initiatives, on the other hand, are as disgraceful to liberals as to conservatives. The Medicare bill may be the biggest new entitlement in generations, but it is more of an entitlement to insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and employers than to the beneficiaries.
The president is right to call this a new kind of entitlement: It is the first entitlement that you have to hire an accountant to take advantage of. It is impossible to see how this scam will form the basis for a better-structured entitlement in the future. Bush has built his re-election around policies that will help him personally in the next election but harm his party thereafter. Nor will they be able to fund the Medicare benefit fully, as voters will surely demand. Dean, should he become the Democratic nominee, to re-establish himself as a centrist. I do think that the backlash against the Medicare bill is not long in coming, and No Child Left Behind is already one of the most locally unpopular federal initiatives in a long time. But as Ive written before, its not easy for Democrats to find centrist language that shows how they would do things differently, that goes beyond the liberalism of more. As it is, I suspect the backlash against this crappy, lazy, irresponsible legislation will not be a call to improve it, but simply another backlash against government. Look at this Medicare mess, seniors will say: government cant do anything right! And when Americans are pissed off at government, who do they call? It will take a very subtle politician to change this dynamic, in which Bush gets credit in the short-term for expanding social spending, and the Republicans retain the advantage in the long term because of the hostility to government its will create. Ill take up the question of whether this is deliberate in another post. Until they craft an alternative vision, Democrats are much better off establishing the logical argument that Bush is a bad president than granting him the totally undeserved credit for being a conservative one.
Read More Tracked on February 10, 2004 12:21 AM Comments But the Republicans will increasingly have the flip side of the problem: they wont be able to run against the government when they are the government. You cant have a one-party state consisting solely of an opposition- not for long, at least. Posted by: Matt McIrvin December 22, 2003 07:21 PM Bush is actually closer to Lincoln then any other President. If Howard the Duck gets the nomination, it will be the end of the party. Plus President Bushs coatails will get a filibuster proof Senate and the house will fall to double digits in democrats. The really wacko left will go to the Greens and the center to the Liberarians. A single huge party and several splinter groups would be a diaster in the war we are facing.
Posted by: ableiter December 22, 2003 07:49 PM Well, Ableiter, I suppose you might as well have a cluster of hallucinogenic observations in one place. Posted by: James R MacLean December 22, 2003 08:02 PM Bush as a Nixonian political pragmatist - whatever it takes to stay in power. Dems shouldnt be charging hes a radical when there are more fundamental, tangible issues like a fiscal train wreck and a military quagmire to proclaim. Posted by: Martin Smith December 22, 2003 09:30 PM First time visitor to your blog. It seems that the Republicans, and Bush in particular, have broken the code. Spend like a liberal and tax like a conservative, and damn the torpedoes. Republican missteps in the past have all been marked by a foolish regard for consequences. Bush saw what happenned to his father when he chose reponsibility over pandering. Posted by: libertas December 22, 2003 10:10 PM The screw everything up so people will dislike the government and vote Republican aka cake and eat it too concept is one I hadnt thought of before, and its just screwy enough to be scary. For success, it hinges on Republicans not becoming the party of big government, in spite of the current massive spending increases and huge deficits.
AB PS By 2012 seems like a certainty, given that the sunsets in the tax cuts mostly kick in between 2008 and 2010, so the President at that time will have to allow substantial tax increases or further damage the budget outlook-just as the baby boomers retire in force. Posted by: Angry Bear December 22, 2003 10:48 PM You have to strip out Bush necessary responses to events, and Karl Roves political tactics and expediencies, to get to Bush or Bush Administrations radicalism. Even if they only m...
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