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
"Posturing for '08, not caring if the 'Craps take over '06."
I suppose so, but, it appears to me to be a definite attempt to split the right, and from a lot of directions. The rhetoric is growing more and more frantic, it seems to me, and it's accomplishing nothing.
Frankly, I don't like Bush's position on spending, nor his seeming inability to deny Congress anything they want, but if the ultra-right gets what appears to be its way, the GOP will not only lose control over the Congress, but may well take a dump in 2008, as well.
This is not a good trend.
Yes. Remember all those conservative bills that he vetoed? Give me a break. Our so-called majority in both houses of congress is a joke. I'm so fed up with the GOP I could puke. The last 2 times the RNC called me asking me for money I told them that I'd start giving money again when they grew a pair. The only reason I have for voting this November is to keep the President from being impeached. Period.
That is simplistic and not entirely accurate. This is commentary on "the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins," which the author feels can be directly placed at the feet of President Bush.
Its a competition...have you seen the fancy ribbon you get?
A failed Presidency maybe?
Its about a conservative base thats pissed off at the RINO president...pretty simple to figure out...
We need to be sure that a TRUE conservative candidate comes out of the next primary. If we don't then we will have more screw up in the WH and no one to blame for it but ourselves. But first, we must get over this idea that a true conservative can not possibly win a national election. We must stop electing candidates that trangulate us out of the equation to appeal to liberals. Look at how Bush has treated the people who got him in. He has wooed the left and they still hate him.
they are posted for good reason... i know why i stopped supporting the president and i've given some examples here for why... i'm not anti-bush by any stretch, i just don't support his policies any longer because in the end, they will cost me more money than his tax cuts alone and they leave conservatism as we know them to be in the dust... i personally believe the notion of a smaller government is a pipe dream and i think how president bush has administered the largess of this government doesn't help his cause because it certainly isn't conservative as i know it...
No true conservative could approve of someone who actually wins elections.
...as opposed to the "conservatives" in Washington D.C. running the Federal Government like a drunken sailor.
"This is commentary on "the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins," which the author feels can be directly placed at the feet of President Bush.
"
I disagree. The article is Bush-bashing, pure and simple. As I said in a later message, I'm not a big fan of many of Bush's policies. However, nothing good will come of this sort of crap. Unless you are a liberal, of course, in which case, splitting the right is a very good idea.
Is that the desired result? If it's not, then the anti-Bush rhetoric from the right needs to be toned down considerably and converted to supportive, but constructive criticism.
What I'm seeing is tons of sheer pique on the part of the most conservative portions of the GOP. That bodes ill for 2006 AND 2008.
Oh, I'll go to the polls and vote...at least for those Republicans who seem somewhat committed to limited government (never for any Democrat, ever.)
But that's where my participation in the process ends. What I won't do is:
1) Give one dime to Ken Mehlman or any other "Vicente's Witness" who shows up at my front door (or in my mailbox) demanding a contribution.
2) Spend one second trying to convince undecided friends and relatives to vote Republican. How can I, when I myself don't believe the arguments I would have to make to them?
3) Attend any political rally for any reason. As Marge Simpson put it: "I guess one person CAN make a difference. But most of the time, they probably shouldn't."
And I suspect I won't be alone. The former base will vote, but they won't work as activists for a party who represents social conservatives fairly well but has kicked advocates of liberty and small government to the curb.
Har. That's a pretty witty one. It's like supporting Alan Keyes or Pat Buchanan for President. It's a tough job.
"i know why i stopped supporting the president and i've given some examples here for why... i'm not anti-bush by any stretch, i just don't support his policies any longer "
You are contradicting yourself, there Methadras. You've stopped supporting the President, yet you're not anti-Bush. Those are mutually exclusive positions.
The GOP appears to be developing schizophrenia, it seems to me. Again, nothing good can come of it.
Bush is going to get impeached. The Dems are going to win the house and then let the hearings begin.
I worked to get Bush elected and now I wish that I had gone to the beach.
The base has left the building.
Being a "conservative" is being a leftist.. BIG government republicans are "conservatives".. You know, conservative, meaning being for the status quo.. The Status Quo is quite leftist.. Some conservatives are de-facto radicals.. meaning being for radical change in Washington D.C. politics.. Radical change to the right..
Staying the same (Status Quo) or conservative is democrat lite.. or even democrat stealth..
No. Conservatives need to vote for Conservative candidates in the primaries (and they have to get on the primary ballot).
And I expect some Democrats to again cross the aisle to vote for McCain in 2008. Not in the general election, just in the primary to shift the GOP left.
There is plenty of opportunity to turn out the vote during the primaries. There is little effort made by the base. Election day is not just one day out of the year. There are primaries, run offs, and bond initiatives (among other things).
In reviewing Bartlett's book, Bandow writes his own book disguised as a book review which it AIN'T.
In doing so ,Bandow likely sets back the cause of conservativism to the Dark Ages portraying pigheaded stupidity as some sort of virtue to which all "right thinking Amuuricans" are just dying to return to.
As Martha Stewart would say: this is a "GOOD thing".
Bandow portrays conservatives the same way many Catholics describe heaven...filled with pious sorts you wouldn't give the time of day to here on earth.
For the enemies of Bartlett, REJOICE! Bandow has disposed of your enemy for you. Will someone show Mr. Bandow to the door?
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