The Six-Year Presidential Itch
BARNES, FRED
The Six-Year Presidential Itch Even with good presidents, energy flags in the second term. by FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH told an old joke at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. A preacher...
...The flow of big ideas and bold proposals stops...
...The Iranians feared what he might do if they didn't release the hostages...
...Another week passes and during the preacher's sermon, the man stands up again...
...Bush may be less of a conservative than Reagan on education, but he's more realistic...
...It permitted illegals who entered the country before 1982 to gain citizenship...
...I contrasted them broadly in the excerpt from my book, Rebel-in-Chief, in the January 23 issue of The Weekly Standard...
...Theory and reality clashed on education for Reagan...
...Bush is no conservative on this one, having created a costly prescription drug entitlement when he could have opted for a program aiding only needy seniors to buy prescription drugs...
...Immigration...
...Still, Reagan was more in line with traditional conservatism...
...Reagan aimed to bring down soviet communism and succeeded...
...Taking on those projects in the first place has made Bush a consequential president, a leader and not a caretaker...
...Courts...
...Reagan was Israel's best friend in the White House until Bush came along...
...On balance, as pro-Israel as Reagan was, Bush's support is even greater...
...Reagan's tax cut in 1981 was bigger than Bush's twenty years later, but it dealt with a far worse economy...
...When Bush followed, he said he was "trying to figure out what to say" about Bono...
...A Bush administration official noted recently that the biggest disasters in American foreign policy in the past three decades involved Iran: the hostage crisis, arms for hostages, and the nuclear arms threat...
...This often happens...
...Reagan cut spending only in his first year...
...Government and spending...
...Iran...
...The president didn't liken the story to his second term, but in a loose way it applies...
...With tax reform in 1986, Reagan trimmed the top rate on personal income to 28 percent, a magnificent achievement...
...Rather than push for reform, Reagan agreed in 1983 to a Social Security bailout that raised the ceiling on income subject to payroll taxation and boosted the age for full benefits to 67...
...it did for President Reagan...
...it did for President Clinton, who was tangled up in impeachment...
...Following the president's State of the Union address last week, conservatives found fault with his emphasis on government-financed energy programs and an American Competitiveness Initiative, plus his failure to promote tax reform...
...Reagan ended the hostage affair merely by taking office in 1981...
...he says, "but only in an advisory capacity...
...Education spending has doubled...
...A preacher delivers a powerful sermon, prompting a parishioner to leap to his feet and yell, "Use me, Lord, use me...
...And there are two leftover domestic issues as well: immigration and making his tax cuts permanent...
...He sought to eliminate the Education Department but wound up letting education spending rise significantly...
...But reform may not occur until the postBush years...
...In 1987, Reagan's aides cajoled him into saying he'd sent Iran arms in exchange for releasing hostages in Lebanon...
...Still, Bush left an important marker...
...Now let's compare Bush as he begins his sixth year and Reagan at the same period in his presidency, using ten current, specific issues...
...Bush promised last week to defend Israel militarily against Iran...
...Bush famously ostracized Arafat, allowed Israel to build a security fence and assassinate Palestinian terrorist leaders without American protest, and insisted on Palestinian democracy...
...The fresh parts of Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and author of Rebel-in-Chief (Crown Forum...
...Both used hawkish and strong pro-democracy rhetoric...
...Under Bush, the switch from Chief Justice William Rehnquist to John Roberts was a wash...
...Foreign policy...
...His speech was conservative only on foreign policy and health care...
...Both took on worldwide missions...
...Reagan was accused of this, too...
...We'll see...
...Bush championed reform last year, calling for private investment accounts funded by Social Security taxes...
...in the sixth year of a presidency, the well runs dry...
...his agenda are underwhelming...
...Both jacked up military spending...
...Bush is no conservative on immigration, but neither was Reagan...
...Social Security...
...The absence of a powerful new agenda has a silver lining...
...Reagan famously stopped Israel from crushing the PLO under Yasser Arafat in 1982 and hastily withdrew Marines from Lebanon...
...Education...
...In terms of conservative policies, Bush is roughly Reagan's equal on foreign policy...
...Antonin Scalia, in effect, replaced Warren Burger, an ideological lurch to the right...
...Bush is considerably bolder in deploying the military, invading Afghanistan and Iraq...
...Bush's new proposals on energy, education, and health care, small as they are, have reignited an argument over whether he's truly a conservative and how he measures up to Reagan, the conservative favorite...
...The same thing happens the next week, so the preacher buttonholes the man after church and says he'd like to use him to paint the pews...
...Bush favors new ways to allow immigrants to enter America legally so they aren't slipping illegally across the border...
...The president had nothing but praise for the singer...
...But chances are the replacement of O'Connor by Sam Alito will jerk the court in a decidedly conservative direction...
...it gives the president a breathing spell to finish the major undertakings from his first term: the war on terrorism, Iraq, iran, the promotion of democracy...
...He also raised taxes several times—Bush hasn't—but he gets credit for introducing a new economic theory, supply side, still a potent force in economic thinking...
...Reagan was better, but not much...
...And further nominations are possible...
...Bringing them to success would make him at least a near-great president...
...Bush has an overwhelming advantage here...
...Use me, Lord, use me...
...And it worked, reviving the economy, just as Bush's has...
...With his Supreme Court picks, Reagan moved the court to the right, but only slightly...
...He vetoed spending bills...
...Like Reagan, Bush is a serious tax cutter...
...In theory, Reagan and Bush would seem to disagree on the size of government and the level of spending...
...Today, Bush has a bigger problem as Iran moves close to producing a nuclear weapon...
...Bush hasn't...
...The administration's zeal, its daring, and passion for new world-changing initiatives seems to have faded with reelection...
...Bush is viewed as the opposite: a strong government conservative who tries to use government for conservative ends...
...Bush is fighting a war against Islamic terrorists (and to spread democracy) and the verdict is still out...
...Now it has for President Bush...
...Bush hasn't matched Reagan overall on taxes, but there's no doubt he's a conservative and a supply-sider...
...He has worked with European allies for a diplomatic solution and believes Iran is so fearful of sanctions and isolation that this non-military tack may work...
...Bush regards the department as permanent and works through it to impose standards and testing on schools, overriding local control...
...He found few vocal allies in Congress, yet he pushed ahead anyway and failed...
...He is accused of favoring amnesty for illegal aliens...
...The public is now convinced reform must come or Social Security will go belly up...
...He won enactment in 1983 of what was by far the biggest expansion of Medicare since its inception...
...Israel...
...So Bush has already reached the Reagan level, and may be surpassing it, in transforming the judiciary...
...Bono spoke first...
...Taxes...
...Tax reform was enacted in his sixth year, 1986, but it had been set in motion two years earlier...
...Both Reagan and Bush should be called idealists, not realists...
...He signed the Simpson-Mazzoli bill in 1986...
...Medicare...
...But their actual records are pretty similar...
...Careful," Bono said in a stage whisper...
...The Reagan administration criticized Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear facility at Osirak, though Reagan himself probably didn't share that sentiment...
...Reagan is thought of as a small government conservative who gutted government and slashed spending...
...Reagan captured Grenada, but his most aggressive policy was to support indigenous wars of liberation in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Angola...
...Bush has held down nondiscre-tionary spending, and his budget deficits are a smaller percentage of GDP...
...His first nominee, Sandra Day O'Connor, succeeded Potter Stewart, a tick to the left...
...And it was no balm to conservatives when Bush joked and back-slapped with Bono, the U2 singer and advocate of debt forgiveness and AIDS relief in Africa, at the prayer breakfast...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 21
