Where are the Bush Democrats?

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He's the one who gets the people to do the greatest things. And that's what's lacking now." -Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan made that remark in a 1975 interview with Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes." The interview has been largely forgotten, and was brought to my attention by the good folks at the Reagan Ranch Center / Young America's Foundation, which runs the Reagan Ranch near Santa Barbara, California, where this interview took place.

Observing the uninspiring presidential leadership of moderate Republican Gerald Ford, Reagan explained to Wallace the need for effective communication. He evoked FDR's fireside chats -- not to mention a harbinger of his own presidency: "He [FDR] took his case to the people, and he enlightened the people, and the people made Congress feel the heat."

While the interview has slipped through the cracks of history, these words of political wisdom from the Great Communicator are as timeless as ever. In fact, they have never been so obvious, especially for Republicans over the past eight years and going into November.

I'm in a small camp of Republicans who believes that George W. Bush has the potential to be remembered as a leader who did great things -- a stoic, stable presence who stood the course and quietly transformed the Middle East and wider world, laying the groundwork for a much better 21st century. Of course, that's a big "if," depending on whether his extraordinary actions in Iraq and Afghanistan bear fruit over the long-run. If they don't, he will be seen as a failed leader.

That said, Bush has not been a "great leader" as defined by Reagan in 1975. Reagan was not only onto something with that remark but was prophetic of his own work. Reagan himself changed people and changed the world. He got people to do great things, inspiring them at home and abroad. Consider the case of Poland, the most important Eastern European country in the collapse of communism, where it took the efforts of, yes, the American leader, but also a people. Lech Walesa would later say of Reagan and Poland: "We stood on the two sides of the artificially erected wall. Solidarity broke down this wall from the Eastern side and on the Western side it was you.... Your decisiveness and resolve were for us a hope and help in the most difficult moments."

Or consider this sign posted near the mortuary in Santa Monica, California shortly after the announcement of Reagan's death in June 2004: "Sir-You told Gorbachev to ‘Take down this wall.' We helped. Thanks for your courage and leadership." Affixed to the sign were two quarter-sized bits from the Berlin Wall.

This admiration has not subsided behind the former Iron Curtain. Today in Poland, they are naming train stops and town squares after Reagan, and literally building statues to the man.

To be fair to George W. Bush, he, like Reagan in Poland, prompted the Iraqi people to some stunning accomplishments, including risking their lives in several historic democratic elections. Bush was equally, if not more, popular than Reagan in the initial days after the fall of Baghdad and removal of Saddam Hussein. That approval of Bush, however, was fleeting. He is not as beloved in Iraq today like Reagan is in Poland -- at least not yet.

But the biggest difference between the two presidents resides within the borders of their own nation, where Bush completely lacks the support that Reagan overwhelmingly enjoyed from the vast majority of Americans. Reagan was elected to a second term in a landslide, winning 49 of 50 states. He left office with the highest approval ratings (Gallup) of any president since Eisenhower. Bush spends his final year in office with the lowest approval ratings (Gallup) of any president since Truman.

What's more, Reagan was a towering figure in his own party -- literally Lincolnesque. In an interesting modern political phenomenon, local GOP chapters throughout the country have begun holding Reagan Day Dinners in February instead of their traditional Lincoln Day Dinners. Bush, on the other hand, is unpopular even within his own party. A couple of weeks ago at the website of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, we received a disgruntled email from an excellent editor who frequently publishes our material. He is a conservative Republican. Angry over an op-ed I wrote commending George W. Bush, the editor zinged Bush as a "destroyer of the modern Republican Party." That's a complaint I'm hearing constantly from Republicans, and I fully understand the point. Bush will leave the GOP much weaker than the rebuilt party he inherited from Reagan.

Further, consider Bush's total lack of inroads among Democrats. It is there, perhaps more than anywhere else, where Bush has completely failed. Remember the Reagan Democrats -- the converts who came to the Republican Party because of Reagan? There were literally tens of millions of them. I meet them constantly to this day. The combination of Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency and then the emergence and resounding success of Ronald Reagan transformed the political landscape for a generation. In fact, it elected George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as well. The Bushes, however, have been poor stewards of the legacy; they have allowed it to expire. This was not so much policy-wise -- though that's a big part of the failure -- but communication-wise.

In the end, then, where are the Bush Democrats? Where are the Bush converts? There are few to none of them.

If all of that isn't depressing enough for Republicans, consider the future: What Reagan lamented to Mike Wallace in 1975 is again lacking -- with no solution in sight -- in 2008. In 1975, there was a solution to the problem identified by Reagan: Reagan. In 2008, George W. Bush's Ford-like failure to inspire is rearing its ugly head as the greatest liability of John McCain. It is recurring; it persists.

McCain is not only failing to turn it around but probably will make it worse. He is a terrible communicator -- a painfully clear inability to speak well and to articulate conservatism. McCain's shortcomings in this regard will be made even more manifest by the Democratic presidential nominee, the most radical-left candidate his party has ever nominated but who has the slick ability to look good and speak well -- even when saying nothing -- and woo voters.

All of this means that the situation is pretty darned grim for the Republicans. To stand a chance in 2008, they need the votes of Bush Democrats. The only problem is that there aren't any.

Part of what made Reagan great was the timing of his Presidency. If he had beaten Ford in the 1976 primaries and served following Nixon's disgrace, the Democrats would have stayed on the offense and with the media always on their side; there would have been a coordinated message attacking him. Also had he followed Nixon’s wage and price controls it would still have taken a number of years to get inflation under control and the economy moving forward. Following Carter was a big advantage because Reagan was able to contrast his presidency with the Carter failure. Morning in America was his reelection theme as the economy was finally pulling out of the doldrums of the late 1970’s. Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan occurred during the Carter presidency, which helped weaken the Soviet Union making it ripe for a fall when Reagan pushed an arms race that the USSR could not afford. It was also a time when the New Deal and Great Society programs where coming under discredit making it easier for Reagan to win over the Reagan Democrats. Reagan was a great communicator but luck played a role in his success.

Reagan had his critics even within his own party since he was too willing to compromise, but nostalgia for the past allows us to forget the battles of the 1980’s, and remember the achievements.

Clinton was a feel good President who did nothing and got lucky to preside at a time when nothing happened, Bush didn’t have the advantage of following a Carter. Wars in America have never been popular except briefly at the start when victory seems easy and the cause just. Measured by success at getting his way with Congress on the major issues like the war in Iraq Bush has been a successful President but the fight has cost him. One of Bush’s biggest problems has been a Supreme Court that often seems incapable of reading the Constitution, something that was far less of a problem for Reagan. In the end Bush may have a more profound affect on the future than Reagan did, reshaping the Middle East and laying the groundwork for an eventual victory over radical Islam is an achievement that only the vantage of hindsight will truly reveal.

Here is a portion of a vanity which I published days after the November 06 elections. I have seen nothing since which suggests I should change my view:

There are many subordinate reasons why this calamity happened and it is necessary to identify them and assign weight to them so that the important ones can be addressed and corrected.

One such reason can be addressed and could have been corrected, or at least mitigated: It is quite normal for a political party in the sixth year of the presidency to lose the Senate and House seats. In some respects, it was to be expected that this would occur now. Clinton, however, was able to resist this historical trend but those were rather special circumstances.

Similarly, history shows the political parties, after 12 years in power, tend to become arrogant, cynical, and corrupt and that certainly has happened to the Republicans in spades. The voters have just cured the arrogance dimension of this equation but it remains to be seen if the corruption has been rooted out. The "values voters" will tell us in the next election if the Republicans have abandoned their cynicism.

Other reasons are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

There are structural problems for the Republicans as well. By the demographic breakdown of the Northeast and the ambitions of senators such as McCain, there was no coherent Republican policy in the Senate. It is in the nature of the Senate that wayward senators are difficult to bring to heel in any circumstance and Bush's inability properly to act as party leader has given Mavericks a green light to commit terrible damage to the Republicans' electoral posture. This demographic trend is destined to get worse and the self survival instincts of what is left of the Republican Party outside of the South will only become more acute and lead to more defections. Other senators, even when not motivated by personal ambition or demographic problems in blue states, felt free to engage in an extravaganza of corrupt spending to benefit their districts and soothe their contributors. There is a regrettable tendency to underemphasize the demographic handicap under which we conservatives struggle. Here is what I posted, before the election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

Bush failed to provide leadership on spending. Merely cutting taxes is only one leg of the stool, fiscal discipline must be maintained. Failing to impose party discipline is a grave sin, but Bush magnified it exponentially with the mindless prescription drug entitlement, farm supports, and educational spending. If Bush can have his prescription drug program that nobody wanted, why cannot Senator Stevens in Alaska have his bridge that nobody needed? Bush not only failed to set the proper example in fiscal discipline, he affirmatively set the wrong example of profligacy.

Press bias, says you?. One need only cite the unrelenting hostility of the Washington Post against Senator Allen to demonstrate Republican difficulties in this area. Allen's real opponent was the Washington Post. But this is not new, the Washington Post did the same thing to Ollie North several cycles ago and will do so again whenever it gets the chance. Republicans have been able to overcome this handicap in recent elections, so long as they had an effective affirmative story to tell. In fairness to the Republicans, it is true to say that the hostility of the press has reached even more egregious dimensions as a result of the war in Iraq. The remedy for this is to get a policy and tell your story well. In short, set the agenda, one which the public hears and understands in spite of the media. The classic example of this is Newt Gingrich's brilliant contract with America in 1994 in which he stole the entire agenda right out from under the noses of the drive-by media. I think their visceral hatred of Gingrich has as much to do with this coup as it does with the actual right wing policies contained in the contract with America. If one is not willing to accept the world as it is with all of its media bias then one is ultimately confounded. If one cannot move until press bias is corrected, then one cannot move on until the bias in academia or in immigrant groups is eliminated. The scale will never be balanced and conservatism, too anguished to move, will never find another majority.

While some exit polls say that only 7% of voters regarded immigration as the important issue, I am personally convinced that the percentage is much higher among conservatives and, anyway, the implications for the Republican Party and the conservative cause of unchecked illegal immigration is nothing short of catastrophic. Bush bashing or not, the cold reality is that George Bush has willfully and deliberately failed to to enforce the nation's laws on immigration. Bush has simply got a blind spot here, he wants amnesty and, by God, now he is going to get it because the Democrats are going to give it to him. The only hope for sanity in controlling immigration has died with Republican control of the House. Bush's duty was to enforce existing law against employers who seek unfair competitive advantage by hiring illegals at substandard wages. Now we have upwards of 30 million illegals in America and there is no conservative branch of government that can stop these people getting the vote eventually and, believe me, they will not vote conservative in my lifetime. Bush's stealth legacy to the Republican Party will become apparent as he exits the White House and Republicans remain in minority status for as long as the eye can see. Bush's dereliction in this regard justifies every conservative in turning his face from Bush and many did on election Day.

I do not think it is a question of George Bush being stupid. I do think he marches to a different drummer. Here is another post which I wrote several years ago and for which I drew considerable flak at the time. I doubt I will receive much flak for the same post today:

The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians. George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as squirmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative.

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