Conservative Bush: An Effective and Pioneering President

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 week’s 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 isn’t 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.

Bottum’s criticism has been knocking around in my mind since I tried to respond to it, and I just don’t think it holds up. There are numerous accomplishments by Bush that belie Bottum’s 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.

Some say that Bush’s budget deficits prove he is not a conservative. It is true that under his watch the federal government’s 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 nation’s future, since the nation’s 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 president’s 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 Reagan’s 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.

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.

Why is that ?

Just because he invited Elton John and his lover to the Whitehouse for sleep over , [ was that the Lincoln Bedroom ] ?

And who could ever say anything about the first ‘Lady’ who tells jokes about George milking a male horse !

And just because Bush never met a illegal criminal he didn’t like or a Peaceful muslim who holds prayers before congress and when two walked out claiming they only pray for Jesus, they were forced to apologize and of course they did so much for dedication to Jesus if job says worship allah .

Why did we hand the Balkans over to muslims ? Why is Iraqs Constitution founded on SHARIA LAW ? Why is Afghanistan being run by terror after 6 years .

And most of all there are 6,200 more mosques in this nation than there was on 911 .

What does somebody have to do to wake up the sheep , open up your minds and stop the party worship . We are a republic or were and our leaders are suppose to serve us, not the other way around .

“”Fine. W may not be the uber-conservative dream you want, but he is conservative, not a spineless “moderate”””

There is nothing surprising that many of us feel angry and let down, as we see every day of the present administration lived out in real time, sometimes infuriating us, or frustrating us, and occasionally looking great.

I have been down this road before, and I am one of those conservatives that would bet, that within a few years as the scale of measurement changes, many of us will move Bush into the great President column.

Statement by the founder and owner of the FR site. If you do not agree with this, you probably are on the wrong forum. Conservative. Not hardline rightwinger which is a phrase that leftists use to disparage any one to the right of Hildabeast and her ilk.

"As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc. We also oppose the United Nations or any other world government body that may attempt to impose its will or rule over our sovereign nation and sovereign people. We believe in defending our borders, our constitution and our national sovereignty."

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 understand and, to some degree, agree with your point. However, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. As long as we accept condidates who position themselves as "the lesser of the two evils" we get what we get.

Only when we refuse to accept the status quo and demand a paradigm shift do we get any change in the existing system. Accepting mediocrity for its own sake simply because "that's the way we've always done it" is unacceptable. Philosophical purity aside, change in this system will not occur unless/until we demand it.

Republican democracy is always about compromise so you make the best choice you can given the circumstances. You also must choose a candidate who can win. Otherwise it's just self-indulgent political masturbation.

Cool, you got to use "masturbation" online! So, by your response, you choose to maintain the status quo, rather than trying to make the change that we, our posterity and our nation deserve.

We don't have to have mediocrity as the standard for our elected representatives but, by accepting that the system is what it is and there just isn't anything you can do about it, you have made the tacit choice for mediocrity and tossed it off as compromise - presumably for "the good of the many".

I've seen one more presidential election than you and I've played the political compromise mind game of voting for "the lesser of the two evils"! It isn't a satisfactory or acceptable option, IMO, and it is a choice between no choice and no choice.

So, let me pose the question again. If you own a company and you are interviewing candidates for a position in your company, why do you want to hire the guy who comes across as "the lesser of the two evils"? Is this an attribute you are seeking for the position? Is it a characteristic in the individual that makes you believe that he/she will be an exceptionally good employee?

Everyday on this forum, we decry taxes, bad laws, incompetence in government, overspending, crappy public education, arrogance and indifference across the spectrum of our elected representatives. The government we have and the bad policies it produces are the result of decades of voting for "the lesser of the two evils".

America is our company and, collectively, we are it's CEO. Our elected representatives are our employees. Check the Constitution again, if you doubt that. When our choice of employees is limited to incompetents, grandstanders, thieves and self-serving liars, we get the type of government that we currently have.

That is just nonsense. People present themselves to run, and nobody ever gives less than the best he has to offer. The mediocrity in America is mainly in the eye of the beholders. It is the envy of wannabes and armchair generals who like to pretend that they could do better and cannot recognize the best efforts of great men because they just follow the spin of derogative coverage. It seems to me that when I was young, people admired those of accomplishment. That is a paradigm shift I would support. We have had about as much of every Tom, Dick, and Harry pretending that he knows more than he knows as we can stand..

The neoconservative idea, broadly articulated, is to employ the machinery of government in the pursuit of conservative ends. It would be a mistake for conservatives to write off government completely. Politics abhors a vacuum and if the Right is not going to fill it, the Left will. And the way the Left uses government is principally a disaster. Bush has his fair share of faults. But re-inventing government to attain and preservative traditional values should be praised not criticized. Its a roadmap of how conservatives would like to see government work. We can either follow it or see the Left take us down the road of despotism and collectivism. So in reality, that choice should be seen as no choice at all.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

What you wrote was very nice but no offense intended, I just don’t find it particularly useful. Do you really believe that the CEO analogy has anything to do with electing a president? Sorry to be such a downer but if you really have been through as many presidential elections as you claim you should know by now essentially what is going to happen. I never said you had to like it. And since you don’t appear to like the way presidents have been elected in this country, what exactly are you suggesting? How are YOU as CEO going to select what YOU see as the “best and brightest” candidate for this position?

“But to do so honestly and accurately, one must note the change in method that President Bush has quietly and successfully been enacting.”

Funny thing that is...I’ve seen a graphic being posted around here with every conceivable example of human behavior listed, while trying to define a ‘troll’. Well, just for kicks, let’s take one of the items listed in that graphic that says something to the effect of ‘trying to change the newsgoup’. Hmmmmmmm...by that definition, one could logically reason that the above quoted behavior is ‘trollish’ (lol)

We don’t need Conservatism re-defined! Thanks.

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