Posted on 04/03/2006 11:04:05 AM PDT by Conservative Coulter Fan
President George W. Bush took office to the sustained applause of America’s conservative movement. In 2000, he defeated the liberal environmentalist Al Gore, abruptly terminated the legacy of the even more hated Bill Clinton, and gave Republicans control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A few cynics were suspicious of Bush’s understanding of and commitment to conservative principles, but most on the Right welcomed his inauguration.
Five years later, the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins. Government is bigger, spending is higher, and Washington is more powerful. The national government has intruded further into state and local concerns. Federal officials have sacrificed civil liberties and constitutional rights while airily demanding that the public trust them not to abuse their power.
The U.S. has engaged in aggressive war to promote democracy and undertaken an expensive foreign-aid program. The administration and its supporters routinely denounce critics as partisans and even traitors. Indeed, the White House defenestrates anyone who acknowledges that reality sometimes conflicts with official fantasies.
In short, it is precisely the sort of government that conservatives once feared would result from liberal control in Washington.
Still, conservative criticism remains muted. Mumbled complaints are heard at right-wing gatherings. Worries are expressed on blogs and internet discussions. A few activists such as former Congressman Bob Barr challenge administration policies. And a few courageous publications more directly confront Republicans who, like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, have morphed into what they originally opposed.
The criticisms are about to get louder, however. Bruce Bartlett has been involved in conservative politics for a quarter century. He authored one of the leading books on supply-side economics, worked in the Reagan administration, and held a position at the National Center for Policy Analysis—until the Dallas-based group fired him, apparently fearful of financial retaliation arising from his sharp criticisms of the administration.
That the truth is so feared is particularly notable because Bartlett’s criticism is measured, largely limited to economics. Bartlett notes in passing his concern over Iraq, federalism, and Bush’s “insistence on absolute, unquestioning loyalty, which stifles honest criticism and creates a cult of personality around him.” These issues warrant a separate book, since it is apparent that Americans have died, not, perhaps, because Bush lied, but certainly because Bush and his appointees are both arrogant and incompetent.
Although modest in scope, Impostor is a critically important book. Bartlett demonstrates that Bush is no conservative. He notes: “I write as a Reaganite, by which I mean someone who believes in the historical conservative philosophy of small government, federalism, free trade, and the Constitution as originally understood by the Founding Fathers.”
Bush believes in none of these things. His conservatism, such as it is, is cultural rather than political. Writes Bartlett, “Philosophically, he has more in common with liberals, who see no limits to state power as long as it is used to advance what they think is right.” Until now, big-government conservatism was widely understood to be an oxymoron.
For this reason, Bartlett contends that Bush has betrayed the Reagan legacy. Obviously, Ronald Reagan had only indifferent success in reducing government spending and power. For this there were many reasons, including Democratic control of the House and the need to compromise to win more money for the military.
Yet Reagan, in sharp contrast to Bush, read books, magazines, and newspapers. (On the campaign plane in 1980 he handed articles to me to review.) He believed in limited government even if he fell short of achieving that goal. And he understood that he was sacrificing his basic principles when he forged one or another political compromise. George W. Bush has no principles to sacrifice. Rather, complains Bartlett, Bush “is simply a partisan Republican, anxious to improve the fortunes of his party, to be sure. But he is perfectly willing to jettison conservative principles at a moment’s notice to achieve that goal.”
Which means Bush’s conservative image bears no relation to his actions. Indeed, reading Impostor leaves one thinking of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, as if the administration’s real record is depicted in a painting hidden from public view.
Bartlett’s analysis is devastating. He begins with process rather than substance, Bush’s “apparent disdain for serious thought and research to develop his policy initiatives.” In this way, Bartlett helps explain why Bush’s policies are almost uniformly bad.
As someone who served on a presidential staff, I can affirm that developing policy is never easy. Departments push their agendas, political allies and interest groups fight for influence, and legislators intrude. But the best hope for good policy, and especially good policy that also is good politics, is an open policy-making process.
That is precisely the opposite of the Bush White House, which views obsessive secrecy as a virtue and demands lockstep obedience. Bartlett reviews the experience of several officials who fell out with the administration, as well as the downgrading of policy agencies and the “total subordination of analysis to short-term politics.”
The biggest problem is Bush himself, who—though a decent person who might make a good neighbor—suffers from unbridled hubris. His absolute certainty appears to be matched only by his extraordinary ignorance. His refusal to reconsider his own decisions and hold his officials accountable for obvious errors have proved to be a combustible combination. As a result, writes Bartlett, “Bush is failing to win any converts to the conservative cause.”
The consequences have been dire. Bartlett, long an advocate of supply-side economics, is critical of the Bush tax program. A rebate was added and the program was sold on Keynesian grounds of getting the economy moving. The politics might have been good, but the economics was bad. Unfortunately, writes Bartlett, the rebate “and other add-ons to the original Bush proposal ballooned its cost, forcing a scale-back of some important provisions, which undermined their effectiveness.” Although rate reductions have the greatest economic impact, rates were lowered less and less quickly.
Bartlett also criticizes Bush on trade, on which he views him as potentially the worst president since Herbert Hoover. “Since then, all presidents except George W. Bush have made free trade a cornerstone of their international economic policy. While his rhetoric on the subject is little different than theirs, Bush’s actions have been far more protectionist.”
Many TAC readers may view Bush as insufficiently protectionist. However, the obvious inconsistency—rhetorical commitment to open international markets mixed with protectionist splurges—is not good policy. Here, as elsewhere, Bush’s actions are supremely political, where the nation’s long-term economic health is bartered away for short-term political gain.
However, it is on spending that the Bush administration has most obviously and most dramatically failed. Bartlett entitles one chapter “On the Budget, Clinton was Better.” Not just Clinton but George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and even Lyndon Johnson, depending on the measure used.
In this area Impostor makes for particularly depressing reading. The administration is not just spendthrift. It is dishonest. Given the administration’s foreign-policy deceptions, it should come as no surprise that the administration cares little about the truth in fiscal matters. Writes Bartlett:
As budget expert Stan Collender has pointed out, the Bush Administration had a habit of putting out inaccurate budget numbers. The deficit in its 2004 budget appears to have been deliberately overestimated just so that a lower figure could be reported right before the election, thus giving the illusion of budgetary improvement. The following year, the deficit projected in January 2005 was also significantly higher than estimated in the midsession budget review in July. This led Collender to conclude that budget numbers produced by the Bush administration ‘should not be taken seriously.’
Like the typical Democratic demagogue, Bush has used spending to buy votes whenever possible. In this, of course, he has been joined by the Republican Congress. But his lack of commitment is evident from just one statistic: Bush has yet to veto a single bill. One has to go back almost two centuries to find another full-term president who did not veto even one measure.
In fact, the Republican president and Republican Congress have been full partners in bankrupting the nation. The low point was undoubtedly passage of the Medicare drug benefit, to which Bartlett devotes one chapter. The GOP majority misused House rules and employed a dubious set of carrots and sticks to turn around an apparent 216 to 218 loss. Worse was the administration’s conduct. The administration shamelessly lied about the program’s costs, covered up the truth, and threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he talked to Congress. The bill is badly drafted and, more importantly, adds $18 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability.
In Bartlett’s view, this might be the worst single piece of legislation in U.S. history, which would be quite a legacy. Writes Bartlett, “It will cost vast sums the nation cannot afford, even if its initial budgetary projections prove to be accurate, which is highly doubtful. It will inevitably lead to higher taxes and price controls that will reduce the supply of new lifesaving drugs.” In short, an allegedly conservative president inaugurated the biggest expansion of the welfare state in four decades.
Bartlett believes that tax hikes are inevitable, and he offers some decidedly unconservative observations on these issues, including the desirability of imposing a Value-Added Tax. He also speculates on the political future and a likely “Republican crack-up.”
But the core of his book remains his analysis of the Bush record. Bush, Bartlett believes, is likely to be seen as another Richard Nixon:
There has been an interesting transformation of Richard Nixon over the last twenty years or so. Whereas once he was viewed as an archconservative, increasing numbers of historians now view him as basically a liberal, at least on domestic policy. They have learned to look past Nixon’s rhetoric and methods to the substance of his policies, and discovered that there is almost nothing conservative about them. So it is likely to be with George W. Bush.
It is almost certainly too late to save the Bush presidency. Impostor demonstrates that the problems are systemic, well beyond the remedy of a simple change in policy or personnel. There may still be time, however, to save the conservative movement. But the hour is late. Unless the Right soon demonstrates that it is no longer Bush’s obsequious political tool, it may never escape his destructive legacy. 
_____________________________________________________
Doug Bandow is vice president of policy for Citizens Outreach. A collection of his columns, Leviathan Unchained: Washington’s Bipartisan Big Government Crusade, will be published by Town Forum Press..
March 27, 2006 Issue
About 36 percent of the public refers to themselves as conservatives. About a 44 percent call them selves moderates and about 20 percent call themselves liberals.
The problem for any president is get to 51 percent of the votes in congress. It is senseless to propose things that have zero chance of getting 51 percent approval.
The conservatives expect to elect someone and then have that person somehow enact the conservative agenda. The problem is 36 percent is not 51. A president can only do what he can get 51 percent of the people to support.
In fact under our system it is next to impossible to elect anyone who will ignore the majority and do what he thinks is right. Such a President would be impeached and forced to resign.
But a Republican president has a much harder task. The media will try to convince the voters to impeach him and force him to resign. So no Republican president can successfully reject the majority view on any subject and long survive.
Conservatives and most of their pundits are just ignorant of how our system works. They think the man we vote for and help elect will do what we want done. That will NEVER HAPPEN until a majority of voters are conservative.
Many Conservatives are really totalitarians. They want a leader that will reject majority rule and do what THEY think is best. Under our system of government that cannot happen. Any president who tries it will find strong opposition in both the opposing party and his own party.
When Roosevelt tried to take the supreme court liberal by packing the court, he was rejected by Democrats as well as Republicans. When the Viet Nam war became unpopular enough Nixon was rejected by both Democrats and Republicans.
Since then no president has rejected what a majority of voters wanted. Reagan let the congress nearly triple the national debt and double government spending. He did not lift a finger to stop it. Reagan never tried to cut government spending.. he only asked that the rate of increase in spending be reduced. The national debt and government spending grew by leaps and bounds under Reagan. It is pretty simple. A majority of voters did not want cuts and Reagan did not do anything to cut spending. Reagan as many others have done.. talked a good game but did nothing. Like all smart politicians he recognized that this a Nation whose government is of, for and by the people.
Until the Conservatives understand that the only road to success is changing voters minds, they will face a constant and total disappointment in all politicians. It is funny. The right really trashed Reagan during his term in office for the same issues they are trashing Bush.
Twenty years from now they will be praising Bush as they now do Reagan, and trashing a new Republican president for not being like Bush and Reagan.. when in fact he will be exactly like Bush and Reagan
Oh, please. They are busily ignoring what a huge majority of the country wants, and refusing to enforce the immigration laws.
Leaving aside the rest of your rant, that one statement says everything anybody needs to know about you.
Read the polls .. and read history. The nation is evenly divided on immigration. And it is the issue that will decide votes for a very few voters.
I would remind you that William Jennings Bryan believed the public did not want illegal immigration 100 years ago. Back then the law was clear .. those wanting to immigrate into the USA had to have permission from their native land and a legal birth cirtificate from their native land.
A huge number of people arrived in the USA with out either of those papers. Italians were a large number of those who arrived With Out Papers. But we let them in anyway.
That is why Italians Americans were called the derogatory name of WOP.. They entered the USA illegally.. WITH OUT PAPERS... The anacronym for With Out Papers is WOP. We let them in and called them a derogatory name.
William Jennings Bryan ran for president on that issue 3 times. He got the crap beat out of him.
The anti immigration people will be defeated as well
Politicians are not stupid... Just because anti-immigration people claim to be a majority, does not mean those in office believe them. Those opposed to immigration have claimed majority status when they didn't even come close to having it far too many times. And if those that entered 100 years ago entered legally as claimed... explain why they were called WOPs.
Some very loud people tried to keep the Irish out of the USA in the 1840s. They even put up signs.. no Irish Need Apply. But there were more voters who wanted the cheap labor and cheap goods they produced than wanted the jobs that they took. At the end of the 1840s there were more Irish in the USA than in Ireland.
Imimgration went through the roof in the late 1800s and William Jennings Bryan got totally defeated on the issuse.
Right now politicians know that unless we grealy increase the number of younger workers paying Social Security this nation will go bankrupt.... With options of a likely failure of our government or the adoption of a policy of killing old people to reduce the medicare and Social Security tax bills.
The European governments are trying to solve that problem by importing Muslims... Why do you think they allow so many Muslims in european countries? We are trying to solve the problem with Mexican workers.
The most likely solution if you succeed, is a liberal supreme court to rule that old people are too senile to vote. Then they will pass laws killing people who need to draw benefits to live.
If we do not import enough workers to pay the taxes for Social Security and medicare, our nation will be killing old people to reduce the demand for benefits.
Do you think the gal that chooses to abort( kill ) her own baby would not vote to have you killed to reduce her taxes?
Nice post at # 11.
I guess because everyone defines conservatism differently, so the next guy doesn't ever measure up, at least in terms of personal definitions. I know that's true of me and what I tend to think.
My opinion is that in many important ways (taxes, free enterprise, patriotism, etc.) W is a conservative, but in one very fundamental thing he is not: he believes that government should take a central role in ordering and arranging society.
do you assume much or do you always fill in the blanks and hope for being correct about what you think people are saying...? i thought i was being very clear on what i've said... i never implied who i would be voting for in any election, so why would you assume that i would be voting for moderate GOP candidates anywhere...? maybe i will, maybe i won't... i'm just not a member of the GOP, i'm a registered independent... how i vote is my concern, not yours and i vote for who i think and have done research that will reflect my conservative views...
Well one out of two ain't bad, as with the current President.
Whaddya mean, you liberal puke?
JUST kidding, just kidding!
"The only reason they aren't electable is because nervous conservatives tell themselves that they can't win. I'm not voting for a big government republican ever again. I'd rather have a democrat in the white house with a GOP congress that has some balls than what we have now, a President and Congress who sell themselves out to democrats and end up getting bashed by democrats afterwards."
AMEN TO THAT BUMP!
Agree, Check out The Constitution Party. Better to send a REAL message that cant be downplayed as "poor turnout" than to stay home and hand the dims the election on a silver platter.
You forgot my favorite GWB loyalist line:
"Hey, Reagan sucked, too!"
"If a man will lie to his wife, he'll lie to me even quicker. And having affairs is lying. I want a President who honors his vows, OK? If he won't honor his marriage vows, why should I believe he'll honor his oath of office any better."
I feel the same way about Rudy. And I have my doubts about Keating Five McCain's personal ethics, no matter how much he harps on pork and his MSM chorus spouts about how squeaky-clean he is.
Exactly what I have done and I am no longer a Republican. The party has left us conservatives.
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