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Consider this story by Steven E. Schier in The Hill magazine, "President Bush - A Radical With a Plan." Quote: "President Bush has had a rough summer, beset by a troublesome military occupation of Iraq, growing budget deficits and media challenges to his credibility." Get that: "media challenges." That's horse manure. These are not just "media." They may as well be elected Democrats. That's who's challenging Bush. They're one and the same.
More: "Lately, the White House has fought back hard in response to its Democratic critics. Why such an aggressive approach? The Bush presidency has a huge project at its heart, one now suddenly threatened by adverse events. The White House forcefulness towards its critics reflects the unusually large scale of Bush’s presidential ambitions. Bush’s goal is a big one — to make the Republicans the natural, default party of government." Where have we heard this before? I guess this is this guy's version of The BIG Theory. "Karl Rove, the president’s chief political strategist, frequently mentions durable GOP dominance as a major goal of the Bush presidency. Bush seeks lasting conservative rule over American politics, completion of the rightward revolution begun by Ronald Reagan. "The Bush administration is working steadily to create conservative dominance over political institutions, party and interest group alignments and the terms of policy debate. In the terms of Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek, Bush is an 'orthodox innovator' trying to adapt the Reagan approach for the 21st century. As James K. Polk restored the Democratic Party in the 1840s and Teddy Roosevelt reinvigorated the GOP at the turn of the 20th century, so Bush hopes to create a new Republican political coalition than can dominate national politics long after he leaves the White House.
"The risk for such orthodox-innovators, according to Skowronek, is that their innovations split their coalitions and end their party’s dominance, as Roosevelt’s progressivism divided the GOP in 1912. So far, Bush has avoided that fate. Instead, his strategy, described to me by a White House official as 'base-plus,' seems to be working. The GOP base loves Bush, though his hold on centrist voters remains uncertain. If his proposed tax cuts stimulate the economy in time for the 2004 election and international events do not turn against the White House, Bush’s long-term strategy will have an improved chance of succeeding.
"The worst news of the summer for Bush concerns the budget deficit, now likely to exceed $450 billion next year. His GOP base may well fracture in the long-term over the problem of large and persistent budget deficits resulting from his tax cuts." The base concerned about the deficit? Dream on! The base isn't going to care a rat's hair about it. "Deficits pose three political difficulties for his project. First, large deficits over time will produce increasing disunity among Congressional Republicans. Complaints about this year’s deficit are already issuing from GOP ranks on Capitol Hill. Second, deficits hand Democrats a national issue with which to put the GOP on the defensive.
"Bush’s own father — an orthodox innovator who failed — found both Bill Clinton and Ross Perot effectively hammering him on the issue in 1992. Third, high deficits endanger other central policy goals of the administration, such as an increased defense buildup and Social Security privatization. The Bush administration promises tight spending control to reduce deficits. Its first two years in office do not seem to guarantee future discipline. Federal spending in 2001 and 2002 grew more than it did during Clinton’s first four years in office.
"And if such discipline is attempted, how will swing voters react to cuts in popular programs? Building a dominant conservative coalition for the long term is a task beset with practical political difficulties. This is an administration bent on huge changes in American politics and public policy and willing to take big risks to achieve them. Right now, they’re fighting hard to retain the political initiative behind this big project, facing some of the biggest political challenges of Bush’s presidency. Whether or not they succeed, the Bush presidency promises to enter the history books as one of the most politically ambitious of all time – because of its efforts to reshape the entire political landscape."
The author here, Steven Schier is Congdon Professor of Political Science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He's editor of a forthcoming book on the early presidency of George W. Bush. In essence, this is his version of the BIG Theory in which the president and his advisors are basically counting on the fact that the base will be their support no matter what, and they're going out there advancing a domestic agenda designed to attract Democrat liberal moderate centrist pinko voters to expand to the Republican base, make it so big that there's no longer a viable Democratic Party. So let me try to deal with this the most delicate way that I can.
I have pointed out every fact raised in this piece to one degree or another, over the course of the past three or four months, every fact raised in this piece. The problem with this piece is its conclusion, I think, which I just shared with you. This base plus approach is nothing new. Everybody tries this. Reagan reached out to the blue-collar and religious Democrats back in the '80s. I mean, that's where the phrase "Reagan Democrats" comes from. And as I've said repeatedly, he did so without stiffing his base time and time again. Back in the '80s, nobody who voted for Reagan was upset with what he was doing on the domestic agenda. I'll telling you, folks, nobody was. Yet the Reagan Democrats loved this guy.
The electoral strategic model that is being followed by the Bush operatives is not Reaganesque. Here comes the biggie...it's Nixonesque. Wait a minute, folks. Just hang on. I don't say that with any intent to diminish either Nixon or Bush. This is an analytical fact. Remember, just as Reagan won two landslides, Nixon won one as well - a huge one in 1972. Now, let's look at this. Richard Nixon, like Bush, embraced, I think, too much of the left's domestic agenda in an effort to attract support beyond his own base. Look at what Nixon did. He created the Environmental Protection Agency, he created OSHA, he created revenue sharing - which is the kind now touted by Hillary Clinton for the so-called homeland security purposes. Nixon was the first president to put real teeth in the affirmative action laws, in case you're too young to know or have forgotten. It was Nixon who imposed wage and price controls when unemployment was at 3%, and Nixon, Nixon relied on the weakness and the public aversion of his opponent, George McGovern, to win his landslide. You'd be hard-pressed to argue that it was any kind of political revolution from a philosophical governing viewpoint. I mean, Nixon made a beeline for the things that McGovern voters liked on the domestic side. McGovern was a pure anti-war candidate, anti-Vietnam. I know some of you are going to be scratching your heads or worse, but it's a mistake to say that what Bush is doing is Reaganesque. There are far more similarities to Nixon.
Nixon would have signed a campaign finance reform bill. Reagan wouldn't have. Nixon would have signed any major expansion of Medicare. Reagan would have vetoed that before it got to the White House. Nixon tried to blur some of the principle distinctions between conservatism and liberalism, but Reagan never blurred the difference. He always referred to limited government and repeatedly spoke of it. He challenged liberal thought and policy on virtually every front. If there's a model that's being adopted - and I think the Bushes are being somewhat original and unique here with what Rove is doing, at least in how they're executing it - it's more Nixonian. Bush told the Urban League "[W]e need active government." Those words never would have crossed Reagan's lips. They would have crossed the lips of Nixon easily. When I heard that line I thought, "Who wrote this speech? Bill Kristol?" So we're looking at similarities, but not to Reagan.
In addition here to establishing, I think, very conclusively and almost inarguably that the Bush pattern here of "base plus," or the new theory that Bush more closely replicates what Nixon did certainly more than what Reagan did, let's deal more with foreign policy and national security, shall we? The comparison to Reagan and the Reagan Revolution does work. It's one area where I will agree with Schier's piece.
Both Bush and Reagan rejected the common wisdom and they've set their undiverted sites on destroying the enemy. In Bush's case, terrorism and Al-Qaeda. In Reagan's view, the evil empire. Reagan toppled the Soviet Union by rejecting containment and appeasement. Bush has terrorists all over the world on the run by doing the exact same thing. Both Reagan and Bush have been denounced by the mainstream media - and even by members of their own party. That's because Reagan was, and because Bush is, a visionary when it comes to the national security of his country. That's the similarity. If you want the similarity between Bush and Reagan, look at foreign policy. If you want the similarity between Bush and somebody else on the domestic side, regardless of what you think of it, you will find a far closer alignment with Richard Nixon in his 1972 campaign and its governance after his landslide victory in 1972....
Furthermore, what is the Nixon legacy? "Great foreign policy president," right? It certainly is. He opened the door to China and all that sort of stuff. What do you think Bush is angling for here? He's got the base plus, the BIG Theory. But the things that Bush is doing that will end up in history books are indeed Nixonian: foreign policy and wiping out of the terrorism.
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Mr. Snerdley desperately tried to make the case that Bush is more like Reagan on the BIG Theory than Nixon, but you can't make that case - other than tax cuts. That's really the closest you can get. A final example is that, during Wednesday's show, President Bush made remarks at the White House celebrating the 38th anniversary of Medicare. Nixon would have done that; I don't know that Reagan did, although he might have been forced to. If Reagan did do it, he didn't want to.
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