Strong-Government Conservatism
BARNES, FRED
STRONG-GOVERNMENT CONSERVATISM by Fred Barnes How George W. Bush has redefined the American right Atypical conservative believes in three things: small government with low taxes, traditional...
...Supporting antidrug efforts is different from supporting medical marijuana initiatives...
...He believes in investing his capital, as he's doing with the ownership society, with the expectation of reaping a gain later...
...Even in the short term, he argued, elections have a powerful effect, since they offer "a way for people to defy killers without using weapons...
...For presidents, freedom is normally a watchword and an ideal...
...And leading, he told me, doesn't mean "leading alone...
...That leaves a lot to Bush's discretion...
...Tom DeLay, Dan Quayle, and Ronald Reagan fit the description, as do millions of Americans who are actively involved in politics and millions more who are not...
...California voters approved it handily...
...The Bush revolution in domestic policy means individuals would choose, not government...
...And this near-mutiny occurred under a strong conservative president...
...Bush has also been confronted with three issues that Reagan was not: embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and gay marriage...
...George W. Bush isn't one of them...
...Reagan had a tacit agreement with congressional Democrats that he would go along with their domestic spending increases if they'd approve his defense spending hikes...
...Reagan and Gingrich failed for lack of public support...
...A conservative successor in the White House might relax the intensity of Bush's global crusade for democracy and moderate America's role as the world's policeman...
...You may think you're in the ad business," Bush wrote, "but you're really a Realtor who deals in matching the right tenant with a house like this and you've done it twice, much to the benefit of our country and the world...
...That was Reagan's style," Fleischer said...
...The president's policy on education is a perfect example...
...He was so disillusioned that he declared, in the subtitle of his 1986 book, that "the Reagan revolution failed...
...Gorbachev, tear down this wall...
...Bush has made the pursuit of democracy universal...
...Bush is much the same: He favors a ban on abortion, as Reagan did...
...But he has alienated certain elements of the conservative movement, especially paleoconservatives led by Patrick Buchanan...
...Though he is an unabashed tax cutter, he's not a small-government conservative...
...What Would Reagan Do...
...Often he has sounded like anything but a conservative...
...But this description, too, has its draw-backs—namely, it does not cover the values or foreign policy aspects of Bush's political philosophy...
...Trying to categorize Bush conservatism is difficult but not impossible...
...Reagan first cut taxes, then went for sweeping tax reform—ditto Bush...
...But conservatives generally agree with Bush's hard-line formulation of a war against terrorists and those who harbor terrorists...
...On two central issues, Bush is actually more conservative than Reagan...
...Bush conservatism makes political sense—and it works...
...He didn't compromise his conservatism by making a beeline to the political center...
...The president characterized his education policy as a "classic example" of applying conservative philosophy to "an issue that normally has been ceded to the other party...
...At an education forum, Bush parried critics and spoke bluntly...
...That would advance America's national security interests and aid the war on terror...
...It took us a long time, and we're still working on it...
...They began demanding, in vain, that it be watered down or repealed...
...Over three decades, Bush has been ahead of other political leaders in attaching himself to some extraordinary ideas...
...Bush has won the argument over whether democracy is appropriate for Arab and Muslim countries...
...And he, like Bush, gave up on abolishing cabinet departments once that task looked impossible...
...When political consultant Mark McKinnon, a lifelong Democrat, met Bush in 1997, he was struck by how "different from Gingrich" Bush was...
...I like to say we're laying the foundations for peace...
...Through tax cuts and tax reform, an individual would have more control over his own income and how to spend it...
...The walls may be built by somebody else, but you've got to have that good, strong foundation...
...For social and religious conservatives, there's Bush's strong opposition to abortion, cloning, and gay marriage...
...As seen with the president's "ownership society," Bush does not hope to keep expanding government...
...Reagan knew this, and Bush knows it too...
...He made conservatism more assertive, populist, and optimistic...
...Reagan ultimately cut the top tax rate on individual income to 28 percent...
...Bush and his aides have embraced an insight lost on some other conservatives: What matters is not how big government is but what it does...
...For small-government conservatives, there's not much except the hope that Bush will succeed in moving America nearer to an ownership society that, in turn, shrinks the demand for government services...
...Bush took full responsibility...
...Despite being at odds with many fellow conservatives' views, Bush's immigration policy is likely to stick...
...Only belatedly did he accede to the desire of conservatives for spending cuts to cover some of the Katrina outlays...
...The core of [Bush's] doctrine rests on the president's belief that stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," explained Peter Wehner, the director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, in a speech to the Hudson Institute in Washington...
...He didn't say put a gate in this wall...
...But comparing him with Reagan, the conservative standard-bearer, is a way of assessing how conservative Bush truly is...
...To attract businesses, Bush wanted to turn coastal Louisiana and Mississippi into a federal enterprise zone with reduced taxes and fewer regulations...
...The words are choice, accountability, and freedom...
...With health care reform, an individual would choose his insurance and where and how much to spend on medical care...
...Lifetime savings accounts would give individuals more choice in how much to save and when and how much to spend...
...This article is excerpted from his new book, Rebel-in-Chief, © 2006 by Fred Barnes, published by Crown Forum, a division of Random House, Inc...
...And this requires skillful application of diplomacy...
...As for gay marriage, that's more doubtful...
...It was the vastness of the president's plan and its staggering cost that alarmed conservatives, some of whom had never warmed up to his emphasis on Washington's solutions...
...In fact, because most of his brand of conservatism has caught on and the remainder is likely to, it's the conservatism of the future...
...No doubt partly from watching his father flounder in the presidency, Bush seized the idea of a strong national government led by a commanding president...
...When I asked the president about his views on this subject, he said that elections are only "the beginnings of democracy" but that the importance of those beginnings should not be overlooked...
...White House communications director Dan Bartlett called Schilling "a stand-up guy...
...But Bush realized that a conservative president can use government policies to expand personal freedom, a conservative virtue...
...Institutions shun accountability, none more than America's public school system...
...We've got enormous influence and we have a chance to effect peace for generations to come...
...His appeal has even reached to professional athletes...
...As George Will has pointed out, a conservatism that advocates a strong role for government— Bush-style conservatism—is now "the only conservatism palatable to a public that expects government to assuage three of life's largest fears: illness, old age, and educational deficits that prevent social mobility...
...Instead, with education standards and student performance declining and public schools dodging accountability, he proposed to use the Education Department to achieve conservative results...
...As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment, a cauldron of anti-Western hatred and violence...
...Calling Bush a "post-Reagan conservative" puts him in the right time frame, but it's too vague...
...Consider, for example, the controversial issue of immigration...
...But they also want to feel welcome in America, and Proposition 187 drove a wedge between Hispanics and the Republican party...
...The only difference is that Reagan famously proclaimed that government was the problem, not the solution...
...The politics of immigration, more than Bush's sentimental view of immigrants, make it so...
...Bush broached Social Security reform for the first time when he was running for the House of Representatives in 1978 (and losing...
...Moreover, he said, elections build "civic structure" and also "affect the psychology of a country" because they "raise hopes...
...Supporting adoption centers is different from supporting abortion clinics...
...In 1994, he went out of his way to express opposition to the ballot referendum in California called Proposition 187, which sharply curtailed access to public services for illegal aliens...
...Conservatives in Congress and the media finally rebelled when he proposed a $100-plus billion recovery program after Hurricane Katri-na...
...Bush has also expanded competitive bidding for federal government work now done by more than 450,000 bureaucrats...
...The same is true on social issues...
...The first is an overriding issue...
...For Bush, it's a policy and a doctrine: The more freedom for individuals at home and abroad, the better for America and the world...
...The underlying principle is that if change is not necessary, it's necessary not to change...
...Reagan might not have...
...The Department of Education topped the list...
...Reagan left office before the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War...
...It wasn't 'burn government down,'" McKinnon told me...
...Both economic conservatives and libertarians abhor the growth of government under Bush...
...His No Child Left Behind legislation violated two conservative principles, local control of schools and minimal federal intrusion, at the same time that it promoted two others, high standards and accountability...
...Reagan was an exception...
...Bush is blunt in rejecting William F. Buckley's dictum that conservatives should stop the advance of history...
...Reagan was a pro-lifer who spoke passionately, but not often, against abortion...
...This is a revolutionary approach of the sort that Reagan would surely endorse...
...That natural right is freedom...
...He's also been dubbed a "big-government conservative" (by me, in fact, during Bush's first term...
...And his solution is far bolder than anything Reagan endorsed or even thought seriously about...
...Reagan, after all, was not a stand-pat conservative...
...No doubt Reagan would have taken that step, just as Bush has...
...On cloning, there's little doubt Reagan would have firmly opposed it, even the euphemistically named "therapeutic" cloning...
...The institution is a strong national government...
...Would Reagan have acquiesced on Medicare...
...It's Bush's too...
...The measure was cosponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy, but liberals belatedly realized that it reflected the rudiments of Bush's conservatism...
...Bush doesn't take lightly challenges to his conservative credentials...
...Jonah Goldberg wrote that he hoped the backlash against the lavish price tag for Katrina repairs might snuff out Bush's idea of compassionate conservatism...
...Conservative columnists were scathing in criticizing Bush's penchant for spending...
...Bush said in early 2005, "We will consistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation, the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right...
...The second key is that Bush's new conservatism has something significant for nearly everyone...
...And in truth, Bush's conservatism is new and different...
...Attempts to impose stability there without freedom have failed...
...Put succinctly, it meant that Bush would be in charge of everything except details...
...One of the strengths of conservatives is their ability to take the world as it really is...
...Faced with incompetent state and local leaders, he felt he had no alternative...
...The truth is that conservative presidents frequently get a pass from conservatives on increased spending...
...It didn't work...
...But Schilling persisted...
...Then he contacted the president's reelection campaign and offered to help...
...Even if, as his critics claim, elections aren't the same as democracy, he believes the process of holding elections produces the building blocks of democracy—political parties, civic habits and institutions, an engaged electorate, an active press, and the delegitimization of the enemies of democracy...
...The president defended, on conservative grounds, his policy of spending billions to fight AIDS, hunger, and malaria around the world...
...The bottom line: On social issues, Bush's conservatism trumps Reagan's...
...He readily tossed aside the arms-control policy of previous Republican presidents and wholeheartedly championed antimissile defense in his Strategic Defense Initiative—or Star Wars, as his opponents called it...
...Bush changed that...
...Bush has decided change is necessary...
...But change the policy altogether...
...Rather than abandon conservatism for the sake of change, Bush has redefined it to fit the times and to come to grips with political reality...
...Bush's Katrina policy disturbed many conservatives because it seemed so different from traditional conservative policy...
...And accountability is a means of producing good ones...
...Red Sox officials (all Democrats) talked Schilling out of appearing with Bush in New Hampshire...
...Bush was so fixated on the devastation and suffering in the region that he failed to sense a conservative backlash...
...He suggested that conservatives had foolishly downgraded public education in the past...
...Both realist and liberal critics claim that there's no guarantee newly created democratic countries will elect pro-American or neutral governments...
...In transforming conservatism, Bush's policies are, more often than not, what Reagan would have done in similar circumstances...
...While campaigning for president in South Carolina in 2000, Bush was angered by several voters at a town hall meeting who called for draconian measures against immigration...
...I think the role of a conservative—I believe strongly in what I stand for—is: Let's lead...
...On Social Security, Bush is Reagan's rightful heir...
...Also, unions as a rule oppose anything that has union members competing against one another...
...The enthusiasm of conservatives allowed Bush to gear his reelection campaign around expanding his vote in conservative areas...
...Bush was reluctant to call for a constitutional amendment to preserve traditional marriage...
...That's reality...
...He prides himself on using his political capital rather than conserving it...
...After all, it was on Bush's watch and because of his assertive leadership and special brand of conservatism that Republicans became America's majority party for the first time since the 1920s...
...Liberal policies caused dependency, a Bush official told me, "and in the process corroded the character of the citizenry...
...This is a way of holding them accountable...
...M. Stanton Evans, the conservative writer, has a rule of thumb about conservatives who gain political power: Once our friends are in power, they are no longer our friends...
...On domestic issues, Bush's policies are likely to endure even where they depart from traditional conservatism...
...And the federal government, in terms of spending, grew...
...He subjected nondemocratic allies in the Cold War to minimal pressure, though he believed that only democracies were legitimate states...
...There are two keys to Bush's ability to create conservative fusion...
...With Bush, results matter...
...The president has responded to public opinion...
...Bush is not a Reagan clone...
...rather, he is trying in many cases to increase individual responsibility and thus reduce the demand for government aid and comfort...
...On this issue, he said, "I hope people say this is the guy who can think through problems and figure out ways to put in place something that causes positive results...
...Bush vowed during his 2000 campaign that America would adopt a humbler foreign policy...
...He has thwarted terrorism, changed parts of the world forever, dominated Congress, curtailed federalism, won fundamental reforms, and treated critics as a nuisance—all of it made possible by a strong national government...
...The question about conservatism has always been how much change in society it will tolerate...
...Bush thought Reagan had spoken clearly and concisely and had distinguished right from wrong...
...Bush, then, is best characterized as a strong-government conservative, a label coined by journalist and speechwriter Dan Casse...
...What kind of conservative is Bush, exactly...
...Bush has invoked the same supply-side language as Reagan, promising that his tax cuts would spur the economy and let people keep more of their own money...
...Bush's remedy would allow thousands of immigrants to work in the United States in hopes that this would curtail border crossings by illegal aliens...
...Reagan would not have liked the costly Medicare prescription drug benefit that Bush pushed through Congress...
...In the Senate, six Republicans suggested a freeze in spending that would save nearly $50 billion...
...The expansion of choice is consistent with modern trends...
...His democracy campaign has been called "Wilsonian" in its ambition and scope—after President Woodrow Wilson, who promoted democracy in place of autocracy and colonialism after World War I. To a typical conservative, "Wilsonian" is a slur, not a compliment...
...In 1981, the Reagan White House put together a Social Security reform plan to eliminate the minimum benefit for thousands of Americans and raise the retirement age...
...He favors an activist federal government...
...Education reform was a product of his campaign for governor of Texas in 1994...
...His reforms to create voluntary investment accounts in Social Security and health savings accounts in Medicare aim to do that...
...And while Bush is an unswerving conservative on traditional values, he is not on foreign policy...
...It not only relies on the free market, it also gives individuals more choice over how to handle their own money...
...In the past, Washington's job, carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was merely to coordinate recovery efforts, not take them over...
...A New Path Bush conservatism has had an unexpected political impact...
...It means that "you lead others who are with you...
...It dwarfed every other issue, including the economy...
...For compassionate conservatives, Bush's global AIDS project and his faith-based initiative are lifted from their agenda...
...He had internalized the criticism that his administration was slow to react to Katrina, though in Louisiana, anyway, the fault lay with the governor and mayor of New Orleans...
...Jeb Bush won the Hispanic vote overwhelmingly...
...These themes hang together and constitute a sensible new conservatism...
...When the Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning it, Reagan backed off...
...True believers in the conservative movement have a well-earned reputation for bickering and for grousing about conservative leaders for being insufficiently conservative...
...We said public schools are important, they've been really important throughout our history, let's make them better, as opposed to saying let's abolish them...
...Bush hasn't yet matched that, lowering the rate to 35 percent...
...And he tried it for nine months...
...George Will characterized their alternative as "Let's leave lots of kids behind...
...Reagan said, "Mr...
...one point on values, and another half-point on foreign affairs...
...Bush's education package, with required testing of elementary school students, would hold education officials accountable...
...If you're a mother and father with hungry children, you're going to try to put food on the table...
...The choice thread runs through Bush's domestic policies...
...To them, it was one federal intervention too many...
...Bush and his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, have fought to make the party inclusive and remove the wedge...
...When Reagan met with Gorbachev in 1986, he boldly proposed to abandon all nuclear weapons in one swoop rather than laboriously negotiate reductions...
...Bush has been steadfastly pro-immigrant for years...
...So would a typical conservative...
...A fair question, though, is whether Bush conservatism is philosophically coherent...
...He has explained his policy as favoring all the government that's required and no more...
...That does not mean, as some conservative critics would have it, that he's really a liberal at heart...
...The coherence rests with the three words and one institution that sum up Bush conservatism...
...They have gained enormously from Bush's post-9/11 policy of waging war on terrorism and demanding democratic change...
...He saw a limited role for government on issues I cared about...
...So what would Reagan have done in the twenty-first century to trim the size of government and make it smaller...
...The last thing I want to do is put Curt in an awkward position," Bush told his aides...
...Bush has fashioned a theory of democratic elections...
...In 1983, he accepted a shortsighted Social Security solvency plan that increased the payroll tax and raised (gradually) the age of eligibility for full retirement benefits...
...The answer is just what Bush has done: next to nothing...
...And there's a simple explanation: With a conservative in the White House, discretionary federal spending tilts in favor of programs— defense, in particular—that conservatives approve of...
...Free markets and individual choice were Reagan staples...
...Measured by the conservative yardstick, Bush can't match DeLay, Quayle, and Reagan...
...In his 1999 campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep, he described the role he expected to play as president...
...Bush doesn't wear a bracelet with "WWRD" engraved on it, but he's a great admirer of what Reagan did and said...
...David Stockman, Reagan's budget chief and a small-government zealot, found himself on the losing end of arguments over spending cuts...
...Ambassadors who were instructed to get out there in their capitals and actively support the policy, publicly and so forth, talk about it with the press and so forth, refused on the grounds they didn't agree with the policy...
...That is why Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman refers to Bush as a "demand-side conservative," borrowing a label first suggested by Jonathan Rauch of National Journal...
...Bush now confronts a system that will slip into the red by 2017...
...He and Rice have made it clear to leaders like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Vladimir Putin of Russia that the closeness of their relationship with the United States will depend on their support for democracy...
...And the president has injected accountability into his foreign policy...
...Bush is squeamish on the subject...
...Reagan vigorously took on the greatest threat to America's security in his time, communism...
...It's easy to see why: Student performance has nose-dived...
...It was an unfair charge, but it worked to frighten away critics and preserve the department in perpetuity...
...He joined Bush in Ohio, a critical battleground state, and introduced the president at several rallies...
...With the terrorist threat lurking for generations, the Bush policy is the only viable option...
...He ran the TV ad campaign for Bush in 2000 and 2004...
...His answer to the disaster was characteristic: He would use the federal government to achieve a conservative end, a rebuilt Gulf Coast with a thriving economy...
...Bush wisely chose not to engage that battle anew...
...Nonetheless, many conservatives cling to the hope that someday, somehow, the federal government will be substantially reduced in size...
...Bush's percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2004 was 44 percent, up from 35 percent in 2000...
...I liked him instantly...
...In his memoir Taking Heat, former press secretary Ari Fleischer said he once chastised Bush for oversimplifying the war on terror as a struggle of "good versus evil...
...The message was, at times, public education isn't important," Bush told me...
...He was reelected in 1998...
...That would require changing federal law...
...Bush would also replace state and local governments as first responders to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or outbreaks of disease by deploying the military...
...He didn't say take down a few bricks...
...In any case, they constitute a distinct minority in the conservative movement...
...Bush was governor of Texas...
...The difference is that Bush goes far beyond that limited role and is seeking to plant democracy in countries worldwide, whether they're friendly or hostile to the United States...
...For Reagan, winning the Cold War trumped everything else...
...Not since Lincoln has the putative head of the Republican party so actively sought to ground the party in a politics of natural right," wrote political scientists James Ceaser and Daniel DiSalvo in the influential quarterly the Public Interest...
...He's made the right enemies: the two teachers' unions and other enemies of accountability...
...The masses don't...
...And even many doubters are coming to agree with his insistence that democracy is the best assurance of America's security...
...After pitcher Curt Schilling led the Boston Red Sox to victory in the 2004 World Series, he appeared on ABC's Good Mrn^-ning America and blurted out an enthusiastic endorsement of Bush...
...Yet there's reason to believe the Bush approach to foreign policy and key domestic issues, and his use of government, will stick as key elements of the conservatism of the future...
...For decades, education was regarded as a Democratic issue...
...Bush strongly disagreed...
...He would protect America's national security and its vital interests around the world...
...He has attracted supporters by appealing to their liberal instincts...
...That's the great thing about democracy...
...If this isn't good versus evil, what is...
...He doesn't like to discuss the issue at all, much as his father hated talking about abortion...
...The elites of the world— Europeans, Middle East dictators, leftist leaders—complain when the United States exerts its influence...
...Choice, Accountability, and Freedom Passing the Reagan test with flying colors doesn't guarantee that Bush's redefinition of conservatism will endure...
...Who's a typical conservative...
...He counted on the wrath of the liberal opposition to drive moderates and independents his way...
...In the weeks after the hurricane, he took eight trips to the region...
...When Reagan came to office in 1980, he proposed eliminating four cabinet agencies...
...He calls himself a "compassionate conservative," and that label is appropriate as far as it goes, which isn't very far...
...Their aim is to create more individual choices in the major decisions of one's life...
...Nations are held accountable for moving to democracy— often in public, by the president or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...
...Hispanics are the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country, and in recent elections the Hispanic vote has been drifting to the Republican party...
...With Social Security reform, an individual would choose how to invest part of his payroll taxes...
...In his 2002 reelection campaign, Jeb Bush broadcast a powerful TV ad that flashed Latin American flags, after which Bush came on the screen and said how happy he was so many Hispanics had come to America and become citizens...
...It makes no sense for conservatives to roll back that policy now to accommodate a small-government theology that may work in theory but, on education, hasn't in practice...
...Newt Gingrich was House speaker at the time and the country's leading conservative...
...But he hasn't spent that capital on terminating any federal agencies or programs...
...Bush added a sentence about training lawyers in DNA evidence to his 2005 State of the Union address just to have something resembling a compassionate-conservative idea in there...
...he asked...
...And besides giving away federal land, he would provide $5,000 in a Worker Recovery Account to every evacuee...
...She was always less conservative than her husband, emphatically so on social and values issues...
...But after gaining $35 billion in spending cuts in 1981, he gave up the fight...
...But the logical next step—for a conservative president, any-way—would have been a global push for democracy...
...Nor does it make sense to sign a lavish farm subsidy bill, which Bush did, while advocating fiscal restraint...
...Now Bush is, though conservatives feel free to criticize him in a way they didn't Reagan...
...Libertarians quibble about the minor First Amendment limitations of the antiterrorist Patriot Act...
...For foreign policy conservatives, at least the idealists among them, Bush is a dream come true with his drive for democracy around the world and his reversal of America's policy in the Middle East...
...Still, most of the president's conservative critics would recognize that, on taxes, Bush is Reagan redux...
...At the national level, the Republican majority coalition is dependent on preserving a solid share of the Hispanic vote...
...When the ad was shown to Hispanic focus groups, the participants asked to see it again and again...
...In 1994, while he was running for governor of Texas, the state Republican chairman, Tom Pauken, issued his own welfare reform plan and declared himself more conservative than Bush...
...For economic conservatives, there are tax cuts that have brought the rates on individual income down to Reagan-era levels— and to still lower levels for capital gains and dividends...
...On stem cells, he has increased the federal subsidy for research but refused to broaden the subsidy to cover a never-ending supply of embryonic stem cell lines...
...Absent a tough-minded conservative in the White House, the federal bureaucracy can marginalize policies it dislikes and discourage supporters of those policies...
...School boards and administrators and teachers don't want to be graded on the basis of the performance of students...
...Given Bush's influence, many more conservatives will adopt that label and the ideology that goes with it...
...He remade Republicans as the party of reform by using the Education Department the same way a conservative president routinely uses the Treasury Department or the Defense Department—to achieve conservative ends...
...Education reform allows individual parents, in limited cases, to choose an alternative to a failed school...
...Michael Gerson signed up as chief speechwriter after hearing Bush talk passionately about his concern for the underclass...
...Bush has learned, however, that conservative leaders don't always get a pass on spending...
...The list of countries that are moving toward democracy (sometimes only inching) or have already arrived is growing: Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait...
...We didn't have effective, articulate spokesmen out there saying this is the right thing to do, this is what we're doing, and this is why we're doing it...
...At a White House meeting on immigration in 2005, "the president spoke more passionately than I've ever heard him on any issue," an aide told me...
...Of all people who should be patient about the development of democracy, it's America," he told me...
...State Department officials tried to do just that with Bush's policy on Iraq and the use of force...
...Both concluded that a growing economy was more important than deficit reduction...
...After his reelection, Bush sent McKinnon an autographed picture from the White House...
...Both revolutions led to a single year of meaningful spending cuts, then a return to sizable annual increases, with departments and agencies targeted for extinction still intact...
...Not bad, but hardly typical...
...Government funding of effective teen abstinence programs is different from government funding agencies that hand out condoms to kids," a Bush aide told me...
...He has been...
...By concentrating on education reform as Texas governor and president, Bush neutralized the Democratic advantage...
...When I asked him whether his conservative activism was the opposite of that philosophy, Bush said, "That's right...
...To small-government conservatives, the Bush plan was reminiscent of FDR's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society...
...Bush believes that, and in this regard he is more the heir to Alexander Hamilton than to Thomas Jefferson...
...He and McKinnon discussed education reform and charter schools...
...The reasonable assumption is that accountability will lead to improved teaching and learning...
...A few months later, McKinnon agreed to become Bush's chief media consultant...
...For paleocons, there's even less to love about Bush conservatism, but they have nowhere else to turn...
...They choose, employers don't...
...The possibility of smaller government has been tested twice in the past quarter-century, first with the Reagan Revolution following the 1980 election, then with the Gingrich Revolution after 1994...
...Probably...
...Bush does not agree with the many conservatives who favor a massive buildup of guards along America's southern border or those who advocate denying government services to illegal immigrants and their families...
...Many Hispanics identify with the cultural conservatism, entrepreneurial spirit, and patriotism of Republicans...
...That is because Bush conservatism reflects, and responds to, the political realities of contemporary America...
...The emphasis on individual choice grew out of his presidential campaign and first White House term...
...Nonetheless, these disgruntled conservatives are part of Bush's conservative coalition, if only reluctantly...
...The only alternatives are a return to Bush's initial policy of humility, which failed, or to President Clinton's reliance on multilateralism, which also failed...
...Throughout his career, Reagan had anti-communism...
...For two decades, Reagan gathered conservatives of every ideological permutation under the umbrella of his conventional conservatism...
...Bush has never proclaimed himself a small-government conservative and hasn't ridiculed government bureaucrats as Reagan regularly did...
...As Texas governor, he concluded that public schools required a radical shakeup...
...It's possible to believe in a limited government that is also strong," the Republican National Committee's Ken Mehlman told me...
...His reform package, he asserted, "is the true conservative position, and if you don't like it you can vote me out of office...
...They refused direct instructions to go out and support and sell the policy...
...Now Bush, despite periodic revolts on issues like the Harriet Miers nomination, has united them again under his unique brand of conservatism...
...My job is to set the agenda and tone and framework, to lay out the principles by which we operate and make decisions, and then delegate much of the process to [my staff]," he wrote...
...So Bush gets a half-point on taxes, Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...If they can't measure up, their jobs will go to the private sector...
...But he did...
...Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande River," he said, surprising the crowd...
...As Will suggested, the traditional measurement used to separate Democrats from Republicans—"big" versus "small" govern-ment—simply doesn't work well any longer...
...STRONG-GOVERNMENT CONSERVATISM by Fred Barnes How George W. Bush has redefined the American right Atypical conservative believes in three things: small government with low taxes, traditional values, including the sanctity of life, and a hawkish foreign policy...
...Bush stressed that "democracy takes a while," which is something that critics fail to realize because "we're living in impatient times," he said...
...Those attempting to get rid of the department were accused of opposing education itself...
...Neither Bush nor Reagan was swayed by apocalyptic talk about the deficit...
...This is a fantasy, or at least a goal for the far-off future...
...The 401(k) and IRA revolution has changed the way individuals save, invest, and finance their retirement...
...Once elected, Bush marginalized Pauken's influence...
...He rejected the fiscal conservatism of balanced budgets in favor of supply-side tax cuts...
...It applies only to a small part of Bush's agenda, the help-the-down-trodden part...
...This alone means that a pro-immigrant policy is likely to be a lasting Bush legacy...
...It's especially applicable to the Middle East...
...Like Reagan, he's a moralist and an idealist...
...But with the possible exception of his Katrina relief program, Bush conservatism is not outside the broad mainstream of conservative thinking...
...Bush gets only a 2.0...
...You didn't have the [State] department teed up and actively and aggressively supporting the policy...
...Bush has unhesitatingly taken on the greatest threat in his, Islamic terrorism...
...Bush reminded Fleischer of the message Reagan sent to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev when he visited the Berlin Wall...
...Bush's response: They usually do...
...They were oftentimes not engaged in support of the policy," a senior White House official who confers with Bush daily told me...
...That's called love...
...On national security, Bush is indisputably Reagan's successor...
...They recoil at Bush's internationalism, particularly his decision to invade Iraq, and his fondness for federal spending and for immigrants...
...For libertarians, there's the fight for Social Security reform, which has united Bush and the Cato Institute, the foremost libertarian think tank...
...I was disarmed...
...But Bush's leadership after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 touched off a revolt among conservatives...
...The Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives, led by Mike Pence of Indiana, claimed that the president could offset some of the cost of the recovery by cutting more than $102 billion...
...Bush has the war on terrorism...
...Peggy Noonan called the president's disaster relief effort a "boondogglish plan" and suggested that Republican leaders were beginning "to spend like the romantics and operators of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society...
...They score 3.0, three for three...
...But Bush at least won an expansion of health savings accounts, which gives consumers more choice, and more competition in health care markets, beginning in 2010...
...But efforts to kill the Education Department failed and proved to be politically counterproductive...
...Reagan aided insurgencies in countries that had fallen into the Soviet orbit—Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola—but was selective in pushing for democracy...
...It is not as towering an issue as combating communism, but it, too, overshadows other issues...
...Bush would brake the growth of benefits for the better-off and allow everyone, rich or poor, to use part of what would otherwise be Social Security taxes to invest in financial markets...
...We're using conservative principles, results-oriented policy, measurements to determine whether or not the money that we're spending is being spent wisely, because our goal is to save lives, not to enhance bureaucracies...
...Politics is also at the center of Bush's education policy...
...The fact that Nancy Reagan took exception to Bush's refusal was not indicative of what Reagan himself would have done...
...Bush has opposed all three...
...But he's out-Reaganed Reagan by reducing the bottom rate for individual taxpayers to 10 percent and the rate on capital gains and dividends to 15 percent...
...Proposing to reduce Social Security's unfunded liability, as Bush has, just after ballooning Medicare's with a prescription drug benefit is hardly coherent...
Vol. 11 • January 2006 • No. 18
