Posted on 08/29/2007 4:34:41 AM PDT by fabrizio
Conservatives have not been happy with George W. Bush. For each brand of conservatism, there is a different critique. Not so with Ronald Reagan, whom conservatives uniformly praise for various reasons. Seventy-nine percent of those in attendance at last weeks Conservative Political Action Conference said they would prefer a candidate who is a Reagan Republican. Three percent would go for a G. W. Bush Republican. One gets the impression that Bush isnt even considered a conservative.
I argue with Joseph Bottum in the most recent First Things over whether President Bush should be seen as a disaster for conservatism. I think not; Bottum thinks so. Chief among his criticisms is that, while Bush may be conservative in principle, in practice he has been simply incompetent. Bush may have wanted to advance the conservative cause, but instead has just made a mess.
Bottums criticism has been knocking around in my mind since I tried to respond to it, and I just dont think it holds up. There are numerous accomplishments by Bush that belie Bottums claims. Yet Bush has also been a conservative in a more fundamental way, as he has changed the way in which government gets things done.
THE RECORD
Some say that Bushs budget deficits prove he is not a conservative. It is true that under his watch the federal governments debt has grown, but the enormous expenses incurred after September 11 must be taken into account. That autumn, the whole U.S. economy took a powerful hit airlines, restaurants, business meetings, banking, investments, jobs, monetary values. It took more than three years to restore the transportation, banking, and investment systems to pre-9/11 levels. Bush deserves at least some credit for leading the country from a severe trough to almost unprecedented prosperity.
Also, the war against jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq required huge financial outlays. These war-expenses have been sound investments in the nations future, since the nations survival depended on them.
Nevertheless, a swollen federal budget is not a conservative practice. Admitted.
Yet perhaps there are better indicators of how conservative this president has been. There must be some reason why he maddens liberals to the frothing point.
Many call attention to the presidents eight substantive tax-cuts. I especially value the lower taxes on venture capital expended to establish new industries. These new capital funds have created millions of new jobs. That is the best bottom line when it comes to political economics: the number of new jobs created.
No president has ever been so strongly conservative on the pro-life front as President Bush. He has consistently labored to protect the human rights of the unborn, and has acted similarly when it comes to other important pro-life matters.
Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion ban and the ban on funding abortions through UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund). He also restored and expanded the Mexico City agreement. He capped, by executive order, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research and vetoed legislation that would have violated this boundary. (He did not prohibit private embryonic stem-cell research, but, rather, he acted according to the Jeffersonian principle that it is odious to tax people for actions that they morally abhor.) He dedicated unprecedented funds to abstinence education through the Department of Health and Human Services. And on family legislation?
Bush endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage as a contract between one man and one woman. He repeatedly speaks of the family as the unseen pillar of civilization. He was the first president to sign a school-choice bill to give parents greater freedom in deciding where their children will be educated. He has committed his administration, through the Departments of Justice and State, to halting sex trafficking and modern forms of slavery throughout the world, and he has appointed an ambassador to oversee such reforms. He has dedicated funding to prepare prisoners for productive lives after they leave prison. And on big domestic issues?
He signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which will curb Medicare/Medicaid spending by $11 billion over the next five years. He braved the third rail of American politics in his attempt to reform Social Security. He implemented deregulation across all government agencies. He ordered every department of government to assess points of cooperation with faith-based initiatives. He signed into law prescription drug assistance for the elderly the first and only health-care reform in modern history to win a nearly 90-percent approval rating and to come in substantially under budget. This prescription-drug reform also pioneered a new way to include the disciplines and incentives of market mechanisms in federal programs. This signal success should help pave the way for similar reforms throughout the health care, welfare, and Social Security systems. Such methods work to maximize personal responsibility and freedom of choice, while providing people with the support of a compassionate government. Some object that this compassionate government bit is not conservative, but it is in accordance with Ronald Reagans modified acceptance of the welfare state.
And with regards to the courts, in just six years President Bush has nominated and seen confirmed 30 percent of all sitting federal judges, as well as two very intelligent and solid conservative jurists on the Supreme Court, Justices Roberts and Alito.
CONSERVATISM REINVENTED
President Bush has defined a new kind of conservatism. It is legitimate to criticize it, even to oppose it vigorously. But to do so honestly and accurately, one must note the change in method that President Bush has quietly and successfully been enacting. As often as possible, in as many ways as possible, he is using as the dynamo of personal choice and the methods of the market, not direct state-management, in order to make government programs more effective and more efficient. That is why Democrats, both of the old New Deal-type and of the new Clinton-type, oppose him so fiercely. They seem to see what he is up to better than many uneasy conservatives do.
Try to imagine the conservative future as Bush is trying to: Old-age assistance is mostly achieved by personal tax-exempt pension accounts. Medicare and other health expenses are paid for by means of personal, tax-exempt medical accounts (partly used for catastrophic insurance, mostly for ordinary health spending, and with a new incentive to watch over normal expenses carefully). Parental choice and market mechanisms help to weed out failing schools, replacing them with better ones.
Note that these new pension, medical, and school mechanisms deeply affect families, not simply individuals. This greater reliance on familial choice re-introduces a reliance on family, rather than on the state, as the chief agent of health, education, and welfare.
Bush has begun a major turn from the state toward the little platoons once celebrated by Burke, the mediating institutions that Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus emphasized twenty years ago. This is a profoundly conservative impulse.
I think this is a great analysis by the brilliant Michael Novak. I agree with most of his analysis — it’s one of the few analyses that puts Bush’s record within the context of the times: he doesn’t mention the recession and market meltdown that Bush inherited from Clinton but makes the point that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 drove much of the policy decisions during both terms in office.
What Bush’s two terms have painfully missed is an effective bully pulpit spokesman. Bush is just lousy at it, except his major set-piece speaches. Cheney could have done that (although I’m sure he wouldn’t have relished the role) but I’m sure they worried about Cheney taking too much of the spotlight. That’s where we’ve really missed the Gipper. If Bush could have effectively taken his major initiatives to the people — going over the heads of the media elites — I think his record would have been much better. And with that ability, maybe he would have done some things differently (like CFR).
It is a shame, really, that he was crippled by the inability to communicate effectively.
So how would you rate Reagan on the issue of illegals? Don’t we measure modern-day conservativism by him?
To a point. Bush was supposed to lead Congress. I have always thought that Congress, especially in the first two years of his presidency, wanted him to lead them into a stronger conservative direction. When they saw he had no intention of stopping pork and, in fact, proposed increased spending they said, "What the heck? Why not do it ourselves?". And, off we went.
Education: Pure deal-making with a supposedly Republican Congress and liberals demanding compensation for losing a close election. To his credit, Bush did try and institute some standards for getting the money.
Once agian. He could have stood up to the liberals. He had a republican Congress waiting to support him.
Immigration: I believe it was a matter of timing as I noted in another response. In the first term, the economy would have suffered from such a crack down. In the second term, we see more of it. Surely the result of conservative pressure but also made more palatable by an improved economy.
Bush has always wanted a "new America". He was convinced that people like you and me gave him a mandate to do before he was even elected.
If 9-11 hadn't happened where do you think we'd be today?
We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America. As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico. George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000. |
Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster
To be honest, these days, I do wish I’d taken more Spanish in school and probably less Latin and Ancient Greek. :-) But we were talking about illegal immigration, not the Spanish language.
bump
I guess so. It bears absolutely no relation to the old kind of conservatism. At they rate they're changing it then in about 20 years Hillary Clinton will be considered a conservative.
To deny that the two go hand in hand in these times is foolish. We aren't being invaded, with tacit approval from Bush, by millions of Gaelic speaking Irish, Polish speaking Poles, Chinese speaking Chinese, English speaking Australians, German speaking Germans, etc.
He also doesn't mention Medicare Perscription plans, No Child Left Behind, the Katrina boondoggle, the fact that government spending has been increasing at a double digit rate, and dozens of other things that make it clear that Bush is not a conservative. Except that he rewrote the definition of conservative so that he is. How convenient.
There were many Spanish-speaking voters in America in 2000. Bush was attempting to get their votes. Being from Texas, he speaks fluent Spanish. Nothing wrong with that. Like it or not, our nation is increasingly becoming a melting pot, and it started long before George W. Bush took office. If we refuse to try to attract minorities to the conservative movement, we’re going to be but a footnote in American politics in a very short time.
Wrong Bush. Jeb Bush is fluent in Spanish. President Bush's doesn't speak more than a phrase or two.
Have you ever heard him go to Boston and speak to the Irish - to Chicago to speak to the Poles - to Chinatown (in Chicago, San Fransicko, New York) to speak to the Chinese - to Minnesota to speak to the Swedes - to Milwaukee to speak to the Germans, etc? He has only focused on one immigrant group - the hispanics. Why?
Like it or not, our nation is increasingly becoming a melting pot, and it started long before George W. Bush took office.
Yes, and through Bush's policies it is now a chili pot.
If we refuse to try to attract minorities to the conservative movement, were going to be but a footnote in American politics in a very short time.
Pandering to hispanics even upsets Hispanics that have assimilated.
Why is Bush pandering to a class of people (illegal immigrants of hispanic heritage) the are uneducated and unskilled? Is that what YOU see as the future of the United States?
Thank you so much. I get very tired of hearing that crap - "Well, our candidate is a creep, but he's not as much of a creep as their candidate.
People, let's stop voting for creeps!
Actually, employers often have to make do with what they can get. They end up compensating for failures of schools, often, by teaching needed literacy and math skills, for instance. You guys who evaluate your presidential candidates on some theoretical and philosophical purity scale may never have worked your way throug a stack of resumes.
I guess you didn't read the article. It's mentioned quite plainly.
I don't think he's pandering any more than I think Reagan was.
I say take the tax cuts away as one of his achievements. Temporary only. They expire after 2010 and you think Hildabeast or any marxist congress will vote to keep them? The ‘pubs are toast in 2008. Even if FDT wins the presidency, what could he do with a hardcore leftist congress?
" seem to overlook some stirring initiatives by this much-attacked presidentsuch as his work on AIDS, for the poor in Africa, and against human trafficking. However deficient you think his judgment may have been about what was possible, no president has ever been more openly pro-life."
Pro-life? Yup.
Aids and the poor in Africa? $ down a sh*thole. No one will remember Pres. Bush for any Africa initiative.
That's the best the writer can come up with?
“Clinton says”
Like I believe anything those scum say.
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